The gallery opening received a respectable 8 guests all from the Bergby or Norrby areas and a pleasant time was had by all it is safe to say. No sales but one of two murmurs of a maybe which may firm up over the course of the remaining three Sundays. It so happened that most of these visitors arrived in a bunch and so the barn became for a few short minutes something of a social hub of the area but I could barely understand what was being said as I walked around holding a sawn off two by four1 in order to create the illusion of busyness. A quirky quirk perhaps but one designed to evaporate any sense that I was chaperoning the visitors before it could congeal. This charade is absolutely essential otherwise a visitors time can be entirely taken up with faltering small talk with ourselves, after which the visitor will have a quick scan, then escape. It has happened on many occasion.
So a good start and in anticipation of our next opening I have been back out in Norrtälje for another view of that fine tree that weeps low and touches the river. The same view more or less as the first of these new townscapes. This one even smaller, maybe an 8, and set on in as little as 60 minutes, including a break of some 15 to chat with the guests of the Thai wedding that was taking place in the old hotel. These exchanges consisted of little more than the odd drunken shout of "hey konstenar" and never once threatened to turn ugly, although i was reminded of a despicable scene I endured when out painting at the Carbiele Inn2 in Torpoint many years ago which truly was a turning of the tide.3 In fact there was one very pleasant exchange with a boy and his girlfriend who came right over and asked if they could sit next to us and watch. Very rare and very pleasant. I felt good for the rest of the day and you know just this morning I saw this boy at the check out of the Lidl where we had hoped to secure some brushes. No luck on the latter but the boy remembered our exchange and greeted us like an old friend from behind his protective blue screen.
I fairly lashed this one on and rather enjoyed it, the ease of everything on this small scale is a pleasure and we felt the same about a harvest scene at the end of last season I believe.4 I suppose to translate this feeling up to our normal formats one would need to use the larger brushes but we have never been too keen on that I think owing to the 'short cut painting' of the you tube painting gurus where the execution of a work with one giant decorators brush is a badge of honour it would seem. The colours are really beginning to transform also. The tree was noticeably more orange than last week resulting somehow in a more shapely tree, with more well defined nooks and crannies and this effect is detectable on the perimeters also.5
So the autumn subjects are revealing themselves once more and while I intend to throw in the odd town study we will keep on with the DS work proper. Top of the list, now that the farmer has literally chopped up all our planned motifs, is the ploughed soil. More specifically the soil after the first plough which becomes a delicious mess of soil and straw, but we must be quick with this also as the second plough will be out soon enough.
One last thing to report before we close the lid today is that we can feel once more our annual whisper of Cezanne getting louder and louder. Now that I think of it, this has happened just about every year but has been disguised as a confusion or indecision on behalf of ourselves with regards to direction. There is indecision but that is only a symptom of the way the seasons really do alter the mood and it seems like that change really does effect how we paint. Who'd a thought we would hit on that kind of authenticity at the very time when everything else is up in the air?
Semper virens,6
John
1 Piece of wood.
2 John was verbally abused as he painted TAS Work 24 Tree At The Carbiele.
3 See DS 1, Work 38, paragraph 3.
4 Johns term for a distant the row of trees which obscure the horizon.
5 Latin, means 'always flourishing'. John perhaps uses this in reference to Cezanne who sometimes signed off his letters with 'semper virens'.