About

Svends Box

I’m Svend Videbaek, born in 1967 in Toronto, Canada. My earliest memory is of drawing. I was probably 3 or 4, sitting at my little drawing table, drawing on paper with Crayola crayons. Some people of my age bracket, born in North America, may remember Crayola crayons. They were great. I still have some. “Svends Box” is from this time. Still have it, perfect for organizing and storing pencils, pastels, watercolour tubes, pens and nibs etc. I did a B.A. degree in English Literature and French Language & Literature at the University of Toronto. I had some spare credits and I used almost all of them to take “life drawing” classes in the little-known UoT Art Department. Thank God I did. Although my drawing might not have improved very quickly, I did have breakthroughs, and my seeing did expand into the world of endless dimensions. I particularly remember my Teacher of first year drawing, George Hawkins, himself a brilliant draughtsman of the human figure. He’d look at a meandering, somewhat listless drawing of mine and say: “You know, I feel that you’re just not searching it out enough.” He was not a brilliant speaker. So, I’d just hand my Conté crayon over to him and he’d make correcting marks on my drawing which I am still grateful for. Then there was the inimitable David Rifat, dapper and twinkly, a Scotsman from Edinburgh if I remember right. He told the story about when he was a student in art school in Edinburgh, and the class was always happy to get the model Sean because he was a splendid model. Once they asked Sean what he wanted to be when he grew up and he said: “I want to be an Actor!” And this was Sean Connery, who became James Bond in a fairly well-known series of movies. Later, in Finland, I got into photography which was an enormous blessing. I had always struggled with composition and I never knew when to stop. I killed so many promising pictures by over-working them. Photography purged me of this fatal tendency, because the photographic picture is a frame, no matter what its shape is, and you have to decide what shall be inside the frame and what shall be outside the frame, and that’s that. And the exposure might be 1/60th of a second and boom, there’s the picture for better or for worse, regardless of “post retouching” although that can be very important. And so the wonderful journey continues, my joy of seeing and joy of creating is growing and there are no limits to the journey. This is the great beauty of it. I don’t know what my greatest strength is, drawing, painting, photography or writing — and I don’t have to know. I can get an idea first thinking of it as a written story, and by doing it I might turn it into a watercolour painting, or a photograph, whatever is most natural to the idea. It’s all the same to me. I’m so grateful that I have this world of endless dimensions to explore. If you find something you enjoy in it, then I will be very glad indeed! SVEND