Saturday

The month of July has come to an end and with it the end of the Swedish summer vacation. The restaurants and shops will open up again ready for business after their long break. The visiting tourists will no longer be at awe that an establishment could actually shut its doors for business during one of the busiest months. The signs will once again hang in the windows “open for business”

We were driving up to Hälsingland again today, traveling in the opposite direction of the returning flow. A flow of RV’s and motor homes much like the migration of salmon in the spring, a non-stop caravan of traffic coming towards us. The thirtieth of July, the end of summer vacation for nine million Swedes. I would just like to thank God that we were not part of the snail-paced migration.

The weather is predicted to be sunny up here so with rainy clouds still in the air, I decided to go out and produce this piece. Hopefully tomorrow it will improve.

We just watched on TV a remembrance service in the main church in Oslo; a remembrance for the 77 innocent victims of a mentally deranged fanatic. It was a collection of Norwegian groups, dedicating their artistic talent to those massacred.

Richard Boyer

Friday

The lazy days of summer have set in, three sunny days in a row. Yes miracles do exist. So as a result of the weather I haven’t been out painting. Karin and I just biked around town looking in shops and did lunch by the town pier. I felt like one of those sea tortoises sunning itself all afternoon on the rock.

Thursday I went out with a 14x18 in hand and just started driving around looking for something to paint. I should have realized this never works with me. It’s always best to have some subject matter or scene picked out in advance; or else you end up doing what I did yesterday. I had this notion to paint the town church, so there I drove and found the trees all surrounding it and offering no real view to paint from. Then I headed up the road to another old stone bridge to find a good view for a piece, but the best vantage point nearby was on the edge of a bridge on a busy highway – a good place to become the next victim in an accident. I took pictures instead and drove farther north to Forsmark.

Forsmark is an old iron-producing factory from the 1700’s. Sweden had the reputation of producing some of the world’s finest quality weapons at that time. And since many spots in the world were at war, Forsmark iron was earning money faster that they could crank it out. The area became quite wealthy.

It was getting late by then and I still couldn’t find a good angle for something; either bushes or trees were in the way, or the angle just wasn’t right. I went home with nothing but photos and a general feeling that the day was a waist. I wasn’t inspired and thank God I didn’t start a painting. I have a box at home filled with un-inspired work!!!

Richard Boyer

Tuesday

We are back in Östhammar and for a change the sun was out.

Most everyone took off to Skansen today in Stockholm; it’s about an hour and a half drive away and there they have a rather large amusement park with some rides that will make you loose your lunch. I have really no desire to be spun rapidly while hanging upside-down, shaken or stirred; besides the car was full with kids. So I stayed here with Elsie and painted.

After a late breakfast I loaded up a bike and rode down to the town harbor. There I found these old boat houses and parked myself in the shade.

Richard Boyer

Sunday

I woke up this morning to clear skies; this bright orb was shining down light and I actually saw my shadow. I still have to determine what it is? It’s gone now as I writ this! My daughter was up and I decided it best to seize the moment and head to the small lake about a kilometer down our gravel road. Bofara Lake, as they call it is surrounded by farmland and forests, except for a small area where they brought in sand to make a beach. There they have dock extending out where people can swim. They also have a good selection of small rowboats beached to the side. We thought maybe I could paint while Lina swam. The idea was working just fine in the beginning, until the winds started to pick up. An hour later I was holding down my easel against the forces; that’s when we decided it was enough as the black rain clouds moved in. I finished this piece off in the barn as the wind howled outside.

Last night I worked on some old barns down the road.

I got a call from Markus and Gage, they are back from their camping trip in Östhammar and reported only one day of rain up in Åre where they were forced to take shelter in a youth hostel. We’ll be leaving tomorrow to meet Karin and her mother at the airport and then on to Östhammar ourselves. The boys said they would have dinner waiting………hum I wonder what they have in mind?

Richard Boyer

Saturday

I worked on two pieces. The old window was done last night during a short break in the rain and the one this morning of the plants was done in the drizzle with the sound of thunder in the air. If anything it’s going to teach me about flat light, under this heavy overcast sky most contrast tends to be nil.

Although yesterday we did finish off trimming the hedge!

Richard Boyer

Friday

This intermittent rain is driving me nuts !

How is an artist supposed to paint out doors when it’s drizzling?

That’s how it was yesterday and how it is today; we did have a few hours last night when the clouds parted and the sun came out for a bit. I decided to seize the moment and went out to do this small 9x12 down the road. It’s an old hay storage barn and there are literally hundreds of them in the area. If the weather would cooperate it would be fun to do more of them!

Karin and her mother flew down to southern Sweden yesterday afternoon, Elsie has a sister turning eighty, and so they wanted to be there for the weekend party. I’ll pick them up from the airport on Monday evening. So the few of us left here have decided to try and cut the hedgerow in front of the house between the raindrops. Right now Victor is doing the sides, but since the bushes are close to eight feet tall it will be my job to balance on the latter to get the top level. It’s a once a year project that has to be done, so why not pick a nice overcast gloomy day?

Richard Boyer

Thursday

Every serious painter at one point in his or her life has to make the journey to the artist’s Mecca, the home and birth place of one of the world’s greatest masters. I’m talking about Anders Zorn, his house and museum in Mora. This, I have noticed is a place where most established artists will once in their life time want to visit. This was my fourth or fifth time here and as usual when I asked the relatives if they want to follow along they all cringe and decline, maybe it’s just me that experiences the fanatical religious epiphany. The only individual I could talk into following me on my mission was my wife, and this was with great apprehension “Two hours of driving there and two hours back again to look at what ?!” She said.

When we arrived it was raining and we were both hungry, like every great journey it is best to eat first, so we found a small restaurant close by to get a bite. After that you make your reservations for the tour of his home. It’s best to do that first since everyone does it and the small groups fill up fast. We had about two hours to look through the museum before the house tour. The collection was quite impressive, starting out with a large grouping of his earlier watercolors. Depression set in - at age 20 Zorn was already a master at painting. Effortlessly he captured the figure in perfect form in watercolor, a medium where one cannot make a mistake. No wonder his oil paintings were miles above any other artists, even by today’s standards.

It makes it even worse when you hear how well he sold and was sought after by the public. He name was even better known over in America with all the presidents and government officials, where they pushed the prices up to exorbitant levels. He painted three presidents; one of them, Roosevelt still hangs in the White House. All of this made him one of the richest in Sweden at the time. This became quite noticeable with his home being outfitted with the most modern comforts at the turn of the century. Zorn even had the first electric hot water heater, bought at the world fair in America four years before the town of Mora even had electricity to run it.

They let me take pictures of the work as long as I didn’t use a flash. Maybe now I can study them up-close and learn something. If I knew half of what he knew I would be happy! So now I would have to say the annual pilgrimage to Mora was well worth it. I took the girls down to the running stream in the backyard, had them take off all their cloths and swim in the water with camera in hand……..only in Sweden !!!!

Richard Boyer

Tuesday

Yesterday it poured down basically most of the day, in the afternoon it decided to really let loose in buckets. We were mesmerized by the volumn of water shooting over the top of the already filled gutter from the roof and cascading to the ground below like a waterfall. It felt like Armageddon, time to build the arc! It was another one of those reading days.

This morning we woke up to blue sky. Markus and Gage, the older boys were heading up to the small ski resort town of Åre, about four hours north of here. There they plan on hiking and climbing up to a remote lake behind the mountains and setting up a campsite. Basically they wanted to get away from the parents! Karin gave them a ride to the train station this morning in Bollnas.

I decided to work on a few paintings while the good weather lasted.

Last night around midnight the rain stopped and the fog rolled in. I went out with the camera. The mist was hanging close to the ground and made for some nice subject matter: everything took on a mysterious quality as it became lost in the shroud of mist. I did a small 9x12 this morning in the barn.

The other 12x16 is a start of a piece I did the day before when they had the cousin’s party. I posed Sofia and Olov in the barn for this quick plein air piece. It will still need some work when I get back to the studio

Richard Boyer

Monday

There are some activities that defy explanation, this maybe one of those.

It’s soccer with a touch of tunnel vision, basically making it extremely difficult to kick the ball and even more of a challenge to see where you are going.

It was the cousin gathering yesterday; with Gage they were ten in all. Presents were exchanged and cake was eaten for the afternoon ceremony. An event the kids were looking forward to for a long time. An event that has taken place every summer for the last few decades. After dinner they came up with this game. The goal posts were some boots on either end of the short field and the clock was set, with a short half time the game was over in thirty minutes. The final score was 4 to 3.

Richard Boyer

Saturday

Thursday was a nice sunny day, one of those lazy days when you just feel like lying around. That evening the high altitude clouds came in and we woke up Friday to pouring rain.

I am use to Utah where it usually rains for a brief moment and then its over. Here in Sweden it’s the opposite; a dark grey sky will move in overhead and it will continue to rain non-stop the entire day. I don’t think we had a break in the downpour for even a few minutes. We tried to get out and do a few things in the yard, but the conditions were just miserable.

This was the kind of day to just park your self inside and read a book.

Today they have planed a large family re-union, sixty or so relatives from the middle of Sweden, another words Karin’s father’s side of the family will gather in the small one horse town of Hälbo. Some of these relatives are known for their home brewed Vodka. They are always impressed when somebody brings a state controlled liquor bottle with a sealed screw cap. It makes such a nice sound they say when one opens it, something they are not use to. In most cases they will bring out a jug, blow off the dust and mix it with orange juice in a rather over sized cup and hand it to you with a smile. I remember as the token American in the family I was always subject to try the concoction several times in strong dosages. I found out that it’s really hard to fall asleep when the world is spinning around in your bed!

I won’t make that mistake again.

Here’s a picture or two of our place and the barn.

Richard Boyer

Thursday

I opened up the email today and was inundated by a hundred or so birthday wishes. My facebook is linked in so I get any posts on my page directed to the email. I am shocked and thrilled at the amount of people that sent me wishes. Thank you so very much, it’s really cool to get messages from around the world.

We just had coffee and cake on the lawn outside I beautiful sunny weather. Our location is up at the house in Hälsingland where the sun sets around midnight and is up again at three in the morning. The family has a small farmhouse nestled in the rolling hills of middle Sweden; a place that has the feeling like you’ve have gone back a hundred years in time. It should be fun to paint here.

Richard Boyer

Tuesday

Karin and I went to the National Museum today, we wanted to yesterday but found out they are closed on Mondays. They had two exhibitions we wanted to see. The first called “Love and Lust” was a collection of over weight Madonna paintings from the Italian renaissance and also a lot of sexually explicit prints done by Johan Sergel. Back in the late 1700’s he did a lot of satirical prints mocking the church and their conservative ideas about relationships. So he blasted back with drawings of basically every position possible for couples screwing. We bought the show catalog!

The next exhibition was called the “Four Seasons”, there they had an Anders Zorn work I had never seen before and since they allowed photos without flash, I took some. The other artist they had a lot of work from was Bruno Lilafors, he use to hang out a lot with Zorn back in the days.

The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering around the old town.

Our older boys took off with a ferryboat for one of the outer islands in the Stockholm archipelago, they plan to go camping there a night and head back tomorrow. We on the other hand will be leaving for Halsingland fairly early in the morning. So the boys will catch up later and meet us there on Friday.

Richard Boyer

Monday

Today Lina and I went to Skansen, a cultural museum spread out over several 100 acres in the middle of Stockholm. There they have collected old buildings and farmhouses, some of which date back to the 1300’s from all over Sweden and put them together in one large park on an island. The people working there will dress up in period costumes and basically play the part of whatever building they are stationed in. So the baker will actually produce breads there in the shop, the wood worker will make furniture and the pottery maker will turn out bowls and cups for sale. And they encourage you to take pictures as long as you don’t use a flash.

One of the houses was making flat bread and they let the kids help. So after putting an apron and hair shall on my daughter, they showed her how to grind up wheat, make the flour and dough. She then rolled it out on the wooded table and they baked it in the open fire stove. And yes they have honey to pour over the top so you can eat it right there.

As I was walking aimlessly around, I stumbled into one of the manors from the 1600’s where they were having a small violin concert in period dress, so I walked around photographing every possible angle as the four women played. I felt like the Paparazzi in a candy store. My idea is to collect as much information as possible for future paintings; and I know some of this subject matter would make killer work. Thank God digital took over print film, now we can just shot thousands of pictures without spending a fortune on development.

Richard Boyer

Sunday

Not much happened yesterday we just walked around town and took in a few museums.

Richard Boyer

Saturday

On Saturday we had Victors conformation in the church here in Stockholm, another one of those stone structures dating back several hundred years and dripping with culture from every pore.

We took our visiting American friend along for the service. It was just a short walk down from the apartment here. Karin told Gage that the ordeal would last about an hour and a half and that lunch would be served afterwards with all the visiting relatives and friends. The service took close to two full hours with everyone milling around afterwards for coffee and cake. Poor Gage sat diligently for two hours in the church not understanding a word of the Swedish ceremony. We all had to give him credit for having the patients to do that. That’s got to be similar to those long-winded Catholic services done in Latin!

We finally made it back to the courtyard house for an early evening lunch. Some of the older daughters of relatives here wanted to take the boys out on the town afterwards, when us grown-ups were winding down. The girls grew up here and know the inside fun spots to go to, which the boys jumped on right away. The idea of hanging out with natives in the happening clubs was a must. They were going to check out some place by the water where they could dance all night. And what teenage boys are going to say no to going out with three gorgeous blond Swedes, they’re not idiots!!!

I heard they stumbled in at 3:30 in the morning.

Richard Boyer

Friday

So last night Markus dragged home his friend Gage from the train station, tired and sweating profusely from the long journey he stumbled into the courtyard still pumped on adrenaline. His first comment was “Dudes this is so awesome!!!” Spoken like a true teenager. Even looking like something the cat would drag home, we welcomed him and gave him a hug.

We ate a spaghetti dinner and went out for a long walk along the harbor. We all managed to stay up to close to midnight, thinking this would make us sleep longer, but the reality was my eyes were wide-awake at five in the morning. I really hate the first few nights of jetlag.

The boys slept in late but the rest of us had an appointment down in Solbaken, a small private school used by the church during the summer located about an hour and a half south of Stockholm. There our son, Victor was finishing up his conformation for the Lutheran church. We are generally not very religious, especially me. My response to going to a church service is to turn my head around 360 degrees, something like Linda Blair did in the Exorcist movie. But like I said before most Swedes will go to church without fail two times a year; once on Christmas Eve and then again on Easter. There was another part about their culture I never got into and that was the notion of conformation. All kids upon reaching sixteen years of age are more or less expected to do the program or face the wrath of their parents.

As my wife put’s it, it’s not about teaching them the ways of the church; but more or less an introduction into adulthood, a so-called “right of passage” So today we drove down to the remote school by a lake to meet Victor, who we have not seen in three weeks. We were all glad to see him and sure enough he had a lot to share about his “right of passage” internment. I think for him it was a moving experience, which I am happy for!

Richard Boyer

Thursday

“Houston, …….the Eagle has landed!”

Our location is Sturagatan, Stockholm at the small apartment the family owns in the middle of town. The building from the 1800’s is actually located in a courtyard in the middle of the city block, so although the traffic can be raging out on the streets, it’s nice and quiet in here. As you can see from the pictures the location is quite idealistic: from here you can walk to almost any where in Stockholm.

The flight was uneventful, except for JFK airport. We might as well have been in some third world country; I’ve never seen an airport so unorganized. We landed on time, but were forced to wait at a run far from the terminal for close to 15 minutes in order to cross over an active section where the planes were taking off. Visions of the Canary Island’s 747 jumbo jet crash from the 70’s came to mind. Once we got through that ordeal we waited another 15 minutes for the planes to clear out from our gate. The whole time it was just waiting for ineptness. We could have just walked to our connecting flight in a few minutes; instead it took us an hour.

We took a nap and are waiting around for a friend of Markus to arrive. My wife doesn’t like when I mention all the kids and friends names, so I’ll refer to Gage Upwall, social security number 567-40-9909, birthday 01/17/1993 as the “lost child from America”

Gage actually tried to get on our flight but booked everything a little late and ended up on the Salt Lake to Paris route with a lovely six-hour layover. With jet lag setting in he is most likely still sleeping on the terminal bench at gate C-4 in Charles De Galles Airport.

He is suppose to be taking the train from Stockholm airport in to the main train station in town, so if he doesn’t show up then we will know something went wrong. Maybe it would be best not to say anything about it to his parents!!!

Richard Boyer

Tuesday

Another 4^th of July went by with all limbs still attached, no fingers blow off or loss of sight. This may have something to do with my wife. They had a ban on all fireworks in our neighborhood since we are so close to the foothills covered in all that dry grass. Lina and I nevertheless bought a package of fireworks from the local grocery store. As darkness fell Lina brought the assortment of fire starters out to the front porch. We had guests over for dinner and were all enjoying some wine when Karin noticed the cellophane wrapped explosives. She shot a look in our direction, “You’re not lighting those off!” Our plan was foiled; we were reduced to a few boring sidewalk sparklers. Our visions of rockets exploding overhead would have to wait until another time, or at least when Karin is not around!

We leave tomorrow for Sweden. So as expected today will be one of those busy days taking care of all the last minute items including packing. But first the laundry needs to dry!

I got this painting back from Mockingbird Gallery and decided to work on it today. If I can get a hold of anybody at Southam Gallery, I’ll drop it off there before I leave. It’s a scene from Brugge, Belgium. I caught this image of a carriage driver returning home as he turned the corner into the light.

My next entry will be from Sweden, when I get a chance to get back on-line. The have a cell phone plug-in device that lets you surf basically anywhere in Sweden. So even up in remote Hälsingland I will have internet reception.

Richard Boyer

Friday

The crit session went well last night; it’s going to be my last one for the summer unless I want to try some cyber crit sessions with the group. We actually have a facebook page set up for that.

I threw my three pieces here up on the stand first and got a few suggestions on things to change. Actually it was quite a long list! The one I did yesterday went through the biggest transformation. The light post had to go and the canal needed to become more visible. So basically it meant painting the entire piece over again. But I think the changes were for the better.

Tonight we are going up to Red Butte Gardens to do a picnic dinner and wine. Sounds good after working all day !!!

Richard Boyer