It's nearly the end of October…..Halloween just around the corner, and I am having an exhibit of the last 2 years work (not ALL of it) at our gallery, Lille Atelier in Bergen, opening on Friday the 4th of Nov.  Am I nervous?????  Not yet. The Posters are at the printers, the framing is at the carpenters, the paintings are not all signed and cleaned up, but that's coming this week. Basically, I'm on schedule.  The style of my paintings has changed ever so slightly over two years, and I am more able to let myself have the lee-way to go with the flow. Authenticity is hard-fought.  I don't want to paint like someone else, and letting myself have the freedom to charge ahead into totally unknown territory is frightening, but I think it's the only way to find truth. Freedom…..that's so hard.

AUGUST…..what happened to summer?!

With the risk of sounding "whiney", I am putting it out there…..this summer has been a disaster.
When, in May and part of June were UNUSUALLY gorgeous, I started to fear that we would have to pay BIG TIME for the weeks on end of sunshine and balmy temperatures. Sorry to say, I was right.
According to the official weather watchers, this is the wettest summer in 90 years, with a couple of days setting new records for amounts of water recorded. Needless to say, it has been grey, grey, grey. I tried to escape up to the mountains, and managed to outrun it for 4 days, but it caught up with me even there.
The rest of the summer has been spent on our boat "Solstar V", around in the fjords (Sogn and Hardanger), with the last two weeks at Bekkjarvik.
We are now back in Bergen and with mountains of dirty clothes and out of our routine; it will take a few days to remember where things are in this kitchen/bathroom/bedroom.
Painting has been nonexistent for months, and I am feeling in a state of limbo. After things are orderly on the home front, I will be headed to the studio-my refuge. Hopefully, I have not forgotten everything about color, form, composition, harmony, creativity, etc.  It may be a slow process, getting back in the saddle, but I will take to it like a duck takes to water. Lots of framing equipment was purchased before I left in June, so that also is a project that I don't know enough about, but am about to find out the finer aspects of it.
I have a trove of good memories and photographs from summer in the fjords, and they will be coming out, slowly over the course of the next months/years, as what goes in must come out, in more areas than just food.

White Easter….

The family will soon be "one, big, happy" group here at Geilo for the next week-putting the everyday, routine behind us for a while and reconnecting.  Easter in Norway stretches from the Friday before Palm Sunday to Easter Monday.  It's a tradition in this family (and about more than half of norwegians) to spend it in the mountains, in the snow, on skis (x-country/slalom/telemark) or snowboard. No matter that the slopes are hard as ice in the early part of the day, and slushy as the sun beats down and melts the icy snow, ski we must!  

I plan to paint.  

Not very popular a decision, but to each their own, I say. I will ski when I feel like it, and I will do other things that appeal to me. I'm hoping to shed the guilt and ignore the side-way glances with raised eyebrows. I wasn't born with skis on, didn't grow up with this tradition, and miss the flowers and birds down along the coastline, where the temperatures are at least 10 degrees warmer-maybe more. 

Back to the painting…..I have a largish painting that I began painting over last year, and it is FAR from finished. I consider the painting that I had on it before an excellent "underpainting".  Also have several smaller canvases that I can play around on that will keep me entertained for the duration. Beside cooking and reading, I figure this will make my Easter enjoyable.  

I have attached a selection of some of the last year's work- it's starting to pile up into a nice collection that I will exhibit a couple of times this coming year.  Hope your Easter is just as you want it to be.

Revisiting Older Work

So, after a long break for Christmas and the New Year's holiday, it felt so good to get back to work in the studio.  Painting, thinking about painting, reading about artists and other creative soul-mates is in my DNA.  Before we left for the mountains in December, I purchased 5 yards of canvas and stretchers, so it would be waiting there for me on my return.  Always good to have some menial labor to start the year off with while mentally working out what will go on those shiny new canvases. Pulling, stretching, stapling, priming…..lots of mental work going on there.  One of the most exciting feelings is when you can splash on those first drops of color on that blinding white primed surface, and dive in.
Sometimes I have a plan, sometimes, not. Often, there is left over paint on my palate, and I just water it down and drip it/brush it/scrape it on in some random movement, following my mood. That is BLISS for a day.  Then, comes the part where you want to pull your hair out and scream "I can't leave it like this!!!"  Granted, it's FRESH and AIRY and BRIGHT….. and I wish I had the guts to leave it and say "I love it this way, and it's DONE!"   Then my artistic integrity comes into play and tells me that I am capable of SO MUCH MORE……
That's when I have to put those fresh new creations aside and go look at some of the previous work and revisit those processes.  Then, go and revisit some artists (physically and on paper) that fire me up and cause me to see things that I  may have forgotten, and inspire me to reach further than I ever have.  I'm amazed that after all these years, I have paintings in the depths that I let escape just by showing up and challenging myself every day.
Older works that I haven't been totally happy with, will suddenly show me where I have gone wrong, and beg me to change this or that.  As my painting style slowly evolves, I see what I didn't see before, and my looser style will spill over onto the older painting, changing it and bringing it into 2016.  Great feeling.  Happy New Year to us all, and may your creative life flourish.