Week 25 – „One Year – One Island“
Hello – are you still here? Is anyone still reading?
I knew I’d definitely encounter obstacles with this project at some point, but I assumed it would either be the weekly drive when the distance was the longest or having to paint in the snow and cold. But actually, I’ve been enjoying the long, quiet car rides, and there’s been hardly any snow this winter. But now – with spring here and me wishing I could be out painting every day – I’m really stressed: like most artists, I have a so-called bread-and-butter job, a job I do to earn money (so I can independently decide what I want to paint or sculpt in my art, without being dependent on its saleability). I mow other people’s gardens. There are about 1,300 summer houses on the island, and we keep the lawns short until our clients have time to take care of them themselves – which is around the end of June. My husband and I look after about 80 clients, whose lawns we mow every two weeks. I walk around the smaller gardens with the power lawnmower, while my husband takes care of the larger plots with the ride-on lawnmower. So, that keeps me busy for a few hours a week. I also do the monthly accounting and marketing for our company and work behind the counter at our summer café. I do also own a gallery. And a week ago, I returned from a 5-day trip to Åland / Finland. I’ll tell you more about it on the next post for week 26.
Soooo – phew – I tried to keep it short above (with the description of my current tasks) so as not to bore you, but this is just a brief summary of what I’m currently doing.
Now, on to „One Year – One Island“: On Saturday, April 26th I was in Arbelunda.
Arbelunda is a tiny place – just two or three farms, only a few houses on the east coast. You can walk right through if you’re looking for good fish and are heading for the famous restaurant at Kårehamn’s harbor. I wasn’t on my way to eat fish (the restaurant was closed anyway), but was looking for a motif. I followed the promising sign for „Gammelgården“ („Old Farm“) and, to my delight, there was a private flea market in the barn. I love flea markets, well, you might have guessed. Whatever. In any case, this gave me a good opportunity to take a look around the farm without feeling out of place. It was idyllic: a few chickens, which must have flown over the fence, walked across the yard, and between some light-green bushes was some laundry on a line gleamed in the sun. As soon as I entered the yard, a thin woman came out of the house and greeted me briefly. I knew her – she was a professional dancer, had performed on the island years ago, and now offered various dance classes: belly dancing, buggy, burlesque, and waltz. My husband and I had taken a buggy class with her a few years ago. We got chatting, I told her about my painting project, and I asked if I could paint her yard. Of course. She drove her car out of the yard (which stood in the way) and I was allowed to borrow a chair from the flea market. I spent many hours sitting on a covered terrace, painting, listening to the clucking of chickens and the chirping of birds.
The light changed, and I struggled with the different parts of the subject. I found the house particularly difficult, as well as two trees in front of it, which were only partially visible among the spring-green bushes. Here’s the change in light: there are three hours between the two photos. It’s best seen in the red facade of the outbuilding and the shadow cast by the wall in the foreground. The sun is now much more opposite, in contrast to the first photo where the sun shines from left to right and thus soften up all the colors.
Because I still haven’t mastered the art of leaving all possible white areas free, I had to use opaque white to help things along – which really annoys me, but I’m still practicing. I also moved too quickly with the foreground and the dark colors, only to realize that I should have left more space for lighter areas in some places. But I finished it.
So here’s my Gammelgård in Arbelunda:
It’s not technically a masterpiece, but it’s okay. That’s the special thing about this project: I finish all the pictures, the first one. If I had several days for a picture or worked from photos in the studio, some would definitely have ended up in the trash, and I would have started all over again. Bad pictures – or ones that you suspect won’t be able to turn out really well – aren’t usually shown by artists. But I can’t afford that with this schedule. It will be what it will be. I’ll invite Jeanette, the dancer, to the opening of my One Year – One Island exhibition. Maybe she’ll like it so much that she’ll want to buy it. Who knows?
One week later I was out capturing the springtime – in my painting. I’ll write about that in the next post, which I’ll post right afterward. I figured it’d be easier to read two shorter ones (maybe with a break) than one incredibly long post – right?
I hope you’ll enjoy reading the next one as well.
