The real Dr Kagul
The only thing to organise when you’re travelling is what you going to eat, where are you going to sleep and what you’re going to do in between food and sleep, so I guess it’s not surprising that when you return you open the floodgates on life’s responsibilities, I feel like I’ve been on a month long waterslide with understandably minimal sympathy from friends and family.
In amongst the chaos an amazing thing happened, I received a message from a Charlotte Frantzen, who came across my website whilst searching, ‘Dr Kagul’. It turns out that Charlotte is the niece of Dr Kagul whose real name was Kaj Filip Gulset, the brother of her mother. If you follow my blog you may remember one of my projects at the Broadway Atelier was to complete a master copy of a painting by Odd Nerdrum, my chosen piece being a portrait of a man called Dr Kagul.
Now I had spent months on this painting of somebody I had never met and knew nothing about, then Charlotte gets in touch and says, I knew this man and can tell you more. At the time I was sitting in the lounge and by sheer coincidence I had just hung Dr Kagul on the wall. I looked up at him and started to cry, I don’t know where it came from, I guess it was something to do with infusing a real personality into the painting of a person I had spent so many hours imagining his life and to suddenly find his identity was overwhelming.
Charlotte has since shared so many things about her uncle, the fact that he was a genius and an amazing painter who taught at the Art Academy in Oslo. Kaj Gulset was a friend of Nerdrum who, so said, sought advice from him concerning colour. Kaj knew the anatomy of a horse by heart and used to paint at the trotting track where horse owners commissioned him to paint their family members and horses.
Kaj Gulset artistic name was Kagul which would explain the painting title but why Dr is uncertain. Maybe, as a tutor at the academy, Odd Nerdrum wanted to credit him with this title or maybe it has something to do with the fact that he lived with mental illness and often had grandiose thoughts about himself. Maybe Odd Nerdrum would like to comment himself but he is not an easy man to contact, I have tried unsuccessfully.Charlotte’s mother tells a story of how her brother did not have money to pay his taxi and paid with paintings which thankfully her uncle was able to retrieve. Charlotte only remembers meeting her uncle walking around Oslo carrying drawings and paintings under his arms, when he looked as he does in the Dr Kagul painting. When sick he destroyed a lot of his own paintings but Charlottes parents bought/saved 2 of them.
Charlotte is clear in saying that these are her mother’s stories and that her siblings will have their own but the whole family is proud that Odd Nerdrum actually painted Uncle Kaj,
even if he looked as he did when he was unwell, when he was well he was the kindest man you could wish to meet. He passed away in 2000, but his legacy continues, he comes from a family of painters, Charlotte being one of them and from the work she has shown me, I would say she is very talented and has a keen eye for colour!
Before meeting Charlotte I had imagined Dr Kagul to be an unconventional, alchemist with a chequered history and I would say a genius and a painter with mental health issues fits the same description!! You never know, if Charlotte manages to find another photo I may have the opportunity to paint the other side of Dr Kagul.
But in the meantime I’m in a new studio the overalls are on and I’ve started painting again. This time it’s observations during my travels.
I had intended to write a blog whilst I was away but being on a motorbike (actually 150cc scooter!!) with a tiny pannier each and a shared tablet was a logistical nightmare. Once I found myself stressing about writing a blog rather than enjoying my experience I decided to wait until we returned.
Here I can merge paint and travel into one.