Art

One day in my Norwegian class, The Good Teacher Inga took us all out to an art gallery in town.  She said it’s important we not just learn the language, but that we also learn about the culture of Norway.  There are a LOT of art galleries in town.  In fact, there are a lot of art galleries in all of Norway.  Every Norwegian house I’ve been inside has dozens of original pieces of art hanging on the walls.  Norwegians are crazy about art.  The art we looked at that day was very nice. It would have been nice to afford a painting, but the one I liked best cost thousands of dollars.  Even beginning artists charge at least $300 for a painting and some even charge that for a copy.  Well known artists get thousands of dollars just for their copies, and their original works of art are in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Some lithograph prints in that art studio were done by one of Norway’s most famous artists, Ørnulf Opdahl, - who happens to live in the same area we did.  Each one of his lithograph prints sell for nearly $2,000.  The Queen of Norway likes his work very much, so that surely drives up the price.  His original works of art are in the thirty to a hundred thousand dollar price range, but he has no trouble selling them.  Such is the affluence of Norwegians. 

Norway values art so much, that if someone gets an art degree, the government has a program that will pay the artist a living wage until they sell enough of their work to make it on their own.  Not every artist qualifies, but hundreds do each year.  I think it’s a very interesting concept.  Norway is probably the only country that can pull that off.  I guess it’s similar to the American program with farmers, but the U.S. never pulls the plug on the cash flow when the farmer starts to make a lot of money, like the Norwegian government does with the artists. 

My husband, Kory, got so worried I might actually spend some of his hard earned money on original works of art of Norway, that he began drawing landscape scenes of our town.  Never before in our twenty years of marriage had he drawn a thing, but his tight-fisted nature spurred him on, hoping to squelch the fire burning within me to have some local art.  It worked.  His drawings are amazing, but he swears he’s not an artist.  He likes to tell people he “just draws lines.”  The lines I draw never look like that.