Wednesday

I started this one today; it’s from Midsummer last year at our place. We had a small dinner party with dancing around the May pole. Yes, it’s a Swedish thing!” In the afternoon the women collected up small branches of greenery and wrapped them around a wooden cross, usually a lot of string will help with this process.

In Sweden one would use the small birch tree sprouts that seem to grow up every where. Here is Utah, a semi arid environment; we don’t have wild trees growing all over to cut down. It’s more of a midnight “Lets steal something from the neighbor’s tree and hope they don’t notice” type of ordeal. Once the cross is covered with leaves, flowers ( also obtained by the same method ) are then tied on top and two rings also adorned with flowers are hung from either side of the cross bar. When done it is stood up right in the middle of the yard and everyone holds hands and dances around it to celebrate the arrival of spring. Usually some form of alcohol is involved!

The girls in my painting are in the process of attaching the flowers to the pole and were nicely back light, so I would really like to capture that colorful glow.

Richard Boyer