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Meet Ulf M: An Outsider in Stamsund (Part 2)
Be prepared to jump almost 20 years back in time. In December 2005, an unusual painting exhibition opened at a gallery in Bodø, an important cultural hub in the Norwegian Arctic. A series of paintings made people stop and wonder. Melancholic men with unusually long necks drowned their sorrows in…
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Meet Ulf M: An Outsider in Stamsund (Part 1)
Ulf Steinar Melkstavik, known as Ulf M, is a Norwegian painter who has developed a distinctive artistic voice: recognizable and subtly whimsical. His art resides at the intersection of the surreal and the folkloric, often populated by figures placed in scenes ranging from the absurd to the deeply melancholic. His…
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Waiting for the Ulf M Film: An Outsider in Stamsund
Lately, I’ve been helping my husband, Eldar, prepare some old films he had stored on hard drives. Many of them have never been shown before. He feels the footage has aged well and serves as a sweet time capsule. The first project he asked for help with was a music…
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GaffGaff Galleri
My wife, Grace, and I have plans to launch an online gallery called GaffGaff Galleri: Digitalpoetism & Beyond. We’ve chosen an absinthe bottle as our trademark. Absinthe has long been associated with bohemians, artists, dreamers, and those who dare to look beneath the surface, much like art itself. The absinthe…
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Becoming the Woman I Needed to Be
A personal journey through growth, healing, and emotional maturity I have always been a fan of personal development topics. Human behavior fascinates me, and I’ve spent years reflecting on my personality. I’ve often admired women who carry themselves with finesse, grace, education, and a worldly sophistication. I would see them…
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No One Told Me About Perimenopause
I would like to use my blog to raise awareness about something I’ve been struggling with since the age of 38: perimenopause. I had some knowledge before it hit me hard. I’d come across it in books and articles occasionally. I even expected it to begin around age 35. But…
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The Currency of Love
Provocation is often met with anger on social media, in traffic, and at family gatherings, among other places. On the global stage, a spiral of violence is unfolding, making many of us feel unsafe. As I’ve pointed out in previous articles, there are smarter ways to respond than revenge, and it’s…
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Illusions of Likes
In a world where we constantly see others’ lives through filtered images, it’s easy to believe that the meaning of life is about impressing others. We want to show that we’re doing well, that we’re successful, loved, and seen. But in the chase for admiration, many of us lose touch…
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The Will To Go On
When I went to sea in 1962, at the age of fifteen, my mother gave me an envelope filled with poems. She feared that the rough, male-dominated environment on board would erase whatever artistic potential I might have had. One of the poems was “If” by Rudyard Kipling, a heroic call…
