Week 3 – an old building in Vickleby
Another sunny and beautiful day on Öland. Yes, of course I choose the sunny days for my painting trips if I can. And so far it’s worked out pretty well. I’ll have to put up with the shitty weather soon enough, I guess.
This time I was in Vickleby. Actually, it’s not far enough south from Karlevistenen, where I painted last week. But Vickleby´s main road is one of the most beautiful on our island. Last year I joined a course at Capellagården, a very renowned craft school that was founded in 1960 by the couple Carl & Siv Malmsten, which has had a lasting impact on the small village. They teach ceramics, textiles, woodworking and gardening. The atmosphere in the school (but for adults only) is incredibly creative, cosmopolitan and tolerant. I really enjoyed the year there, even though I was only there once a week. So I was drawn to Vickleby (as I missed it last week) and that’s why I went there.
I then drove up and down the main road, looking at the many beautiful houses and peeking into overgrown and enchanted gardens. I examined the church from all sides and viewed down into the valley… in the end it was an old, shabby building that I chose. I sat with my back to the sun and to a fence beside a tree and painted just the part of the facade on which the shadow of the tree fell.
If I were an experienced watercolor painter, I would have known how to paint the rough stonewall with just a few strokes of paint. But I never really learned the classic watercolor technique. The fact that I have been painting with watercolors since my youth is because for my 14th birthday my aunt gave me a watercolor box, some brushes and a field easel. Up until then I had mainly drawn with pencil and I entusiastically threw myself into the new colors. Back then, there were no YouTube videos to watch. And in my family and our entire circle of friends, there was no one who painted. So I just tried things out. Of course, I could have looked at other watercolor paintings, but I didn’t have access to such paintings. I couldn’t afford art books – and it never even occurred to me. I saw my first art exhibition at school when I was 15 and that was in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, where you´ll find old masters from the 14th to 18th centuries – so all oil paintings, no watercolors. I then developed my very own technique, in which I put many, many layers of paint on top of each other and often dab off excess paint with a kitchen towel. Because the paper can’t absorb an infinite number of layers of water, I have to wait in between until it has dried. At home you can hurry the process with a hairdryer, but outside in nature you just have to wait.
I don’t want to make excuses or apologize, just explain why I paint more slowly than other watercolor painters – it’s actually a pretty fast technique. And yes, I would like to learn the technique properly – from scratch. But in recent years I’ve focused on acrylic painting, smaller sculptures and installations. Maybe my style will change during this project during the coming year – I’m trying to get away from the many layers and dabbing. Anyway: I didn’t finish. At 5 p.m. I was sitting stiffly and my concentration on the subject was gone. If I don’t want to mess up the picture, I have to stop at that point. And I did unavoidably. I packed up and drove home. The next day I finished the picture in my studio – with the help of a photo. Again! But what can I do….
But I’m happy with the painting. And I keep realizing that I like painting old buildings better than pure landscapes. And I like the old, the rusty, the worn-out in the motif.
If you know a great place, an old abandoned house, a crooked fisherman’s hut or something similar on Öland, I look forward to your tips. I don’t know much about the south of Öland in particular and it seems to me that I will cycle past many beautiful places because I don’t know that they exist. Just write a comment to this report. I read them all 😉
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Think colorfully (not only pink)!
Angelika