Painting in Sweden

Last week I had the use of a house in Tällberg on Lake Siljan in the Dalarna region of Sweden. As it is midsummer, the days are very long there (with a cloudless sky it does not get completely dark even at 2am) which allowed me to paint more or less when I liked. This is fine as long as one is blessed with clement weather which I almost had for a day or two. In this part of Sweden, nearly all the houses are red with white window frames and porches set within wide lawns in rolling countryside – very picturesque. There is plenty of room to park a car and set up an easel without bothering anybody which is a great boon to plein air artists. The only difficulty was dealing with the fast moving sun (when it was visible) which circles around just above the skyline and changes the shadows in the landscape more quickly than I have been used to in southern Europe or the tropics. Below are photos of a few of my paintings.

Erika's House, 30x20cm

Tallberg Houses, 30x20cm

Tallberg Maypole , 25x35cm

Ratvik Church, 20x30cm

Lake Siljan from Tallberg, oil on board, 20 x 30cm

Lake Siljan, evening, oil on board, 20 x 30 cm

Lake Siljan from Tallberg 2, oil on canvas, 40 x 60cm

On a particularly rainy day, I drove to Mora, a town a few miles north, to see the Zornmuseet, a museum dedicated to the works of Anders Zorn, one of Sweden’s most successful artists, and one whose work I find inspiring. It has a sizeable collection of some of his best watercolours and oils. I have included one of his best known paintings of the region of which he was a native, to give a feel of how in some respects the landscape has hardly changed in over 100 years.

Midsommardans, Anders Zorn