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Paris in spring is said to be utterly romantic. Some years ago, my husband and I visited Paris for a week. It rained most of the time... but we got a few romantic strolls along the river Seine in the evenings. Of course we went up inside the Eiffel Tower. I had seen many images of this iconic landmark, the epitome of Paris, but that did not prepare me for how enormous the tower is in real life. It rises majestically over the city, and cannot be ignored. I especially liked the view of it from Montmartre, which is the view I've painted.

The painting shows my impression of the vast city and the huge tower. 

Of course I had to use an impressionistic manner to paint this. And I chose a French paper, Clairefontaine PastelMat Card. Some of the pastel sticks I used are of the French brand Girault.

On the computer screen, the painting may look quite detailed, but it consists of overlapping and adjacent strokes of pigments. Here is a detail showing the buildings seen just in front of the Eiffel Tower:

This detail is slightly enlarged. As you see, the buildings are mere random looking strokes, but at a normal viewing distance, your brain will understand them to be convincing houses in a city, and trees of a boulevard.

See a larger version of the whole painting here.

Cities have different colour schemes: Paris and Athens are mainly white, while London is kind of beige and brown. Italian cities tend to be colorful, and so is the Old Town of Stockholm, Sweden (much of the rest of the city is a grayish brown, though). Here we find yellows, oranges, and reds, in their more muted form of earth pigments.

The cathedral was first built in the 1260s, and named after St Nicholas. The tower was rebuilt in the 1420s. The church has been enlarged several times.

I happen to love the sight of the tower from the steep street of Storkyrkobrinken. The words "towers majestically" is apt, as the Royal Palace is just to the left of the church.

The painting may look very detailed because of the small size of the image, but in reality, most windows are simply one or two strokes of a slim pastel stick:

 As you see in the detail above, it is clear that this painting is made by hand, and not one line is perfectly straight. In fact, I used a straight edge for one long line, and it looked very out of place in the painting, so I had to erase it and do it again by hand. When painting, one has to choose between having all lines perfectly straight, or none of them. If one mixes straight and hand-drawn, it will look wrong and awkward. I prefer the hand-made look, as otherwise I would have enlarged a photo and printed it with all its perfect details. The imperfections, the mark of the hand, is what helps a painting come alive, so to speak, and make it unique. 

For more info about the painting, click here.
On Facebook, click here.

The painting will be included in my next solo show, March 28th, 2020. 

Ever since I read about St Bridget of Sweden making a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in the 1300s, I have wanted to experience and discover what such a long walk does to a person. This September, it became a reality. We walked the easier south-to-north route from the Portuguese border up to Compostela. 

I like driving a bit fast when it is safe to do that. It is a bit of a thrill. However, on this pilgrimage I found that there is much to be said in favor of slow traveling. There is a story about the explorer Livingstone which goes like this: He was determined to get from A to B, so much that suddenly his native guide sits down and refuses to go further. When Livingstone asked what was the matter, the guide responded: We have been going so fast that I must wait for my soul to catch up with my body.

There is wisdom in that, I discovered. When you move step by step through the hilly landscape, your soul stays with you, and a peace of mind settles on you.

Eventually we arrived in Santiago de Compostela, and I was lucky to find the cathedral dramatically lit by the brilliant sunshine. I immediately knew I would paint that scene.

As usual, I do careful planning of my paintings before I even put the canvas on the easel.

This is a rough plan for the darks and lights -- for the abstract shapes underlying the composition of the painting:

And as you can see in A below, I stuck to the plan, as I started with the underpainting of the shadows:

B shows the first layers of paint on top of the underpainting. It is hard to see when the image is this small, but every area of paint has multiple colors in it. The sky, for example, has blues, violets, greens and warmer yellows.

In this painting I used brushes, and mixed most of the paint on the palette. That was the only way for me to keep track of all the detail in the cathedral -- not that I painted every detail, I merely suggested the larger features.

Finally, I thought I had finished the painting. I let it sit overnight, and the next day I discovered that I had to make a few changes. The lady in the bottom right corner (green arrow below) demanded too much attention. I really wanted here there, as she represented how I felt after a long day's walk: too warm, old, bigger than normal, and needing support, but also with uplifted spirits. I had to put my emotions aside, and think of what was best for the painting, and sadly, she had to go.

Originally, I had planned to include a person sitting on the stairs (the spot by the pink arrow). It didn't look right either, so I fixed that. 

Now I had a big blueish empty space in the bottom right corner, and likewise in the upper left quadrant (yellow arrow). I had to change that somehow. First, I thought I might put some birds in the sky, as there are always doves circling cathedrals. But, no. Again, I felt that living birds would direct too much attention where I didn't want it. The most natural thing that would be there, but in reality almost invisible as it is so expected, would be a cloud. Yes, that solved that problem.

Then I checked my edges carefully, added a bit more contrast and colour to the right tower of the cathedral, and was done.

Emotionally, this painting is a summation of the whole pilgrimage. The towers of the cathedral stretch upward toward the heavens, flaming against the sky. The foreground represents the earthlier concerns, and the very good food and well-earned and well-deserved rests we had at restaurants and cafés. The man sitting at the table is speaking in his smartphone. In our smartphones we had maps and instructions for each part of the route. What is highly modern is existing in the midst of millennia old faith, medieval churches and Baroque cathedrals.

There is this place in Stockholm's Old Town which is a favorite of mine, called The Burnt Lot (Brända tomten, in Swedish). I've painted the scene before, hence the number IV (4) in the title. If you want to know a bit more about the spot, go to my previous blog post on it.

The current version is from a different angle, painted in oils, and slightly more realistic in manner than impressionistic. It is very early autumn, only visible in the rusty colors of the vine where it is silhouetted against the sky. Since the previous versions, a restaurant has opened in the orange-brown house, but as the weather is cooling, there are no tables outdoors.

See a larger version of the current painting on my website.

Previous versions (all are pastels, and sold):

I

II

III