Depict

The chicken-run next to my future home.

Pen, watercolor and white ink.
I have some struggles in my life. I try to work with them and grow from them but it is hard.

I want to be able to label myself as an artist. I often find myself saying things like “If I was an artist, I would do this and that..”. Even now when I have decided to call myself Artist I easy add something after that explains that I’m not or something that makes it obvious that I am telling a joke. I guess that I’m not the only one who goes trough this, but I wish I did when I was fifteen instead and that I had already got the habit of being one. Maria the Artist!

It goes deeper than just the label. I avoid things artistic.
It is almost impossible for me to leave comment on other artblogs. I blush and feel uncomfortable when I get recognition, even if I do want to share and show.

I have a hard time to walk in to an art store and buy things I dream of because of this fear that they will laugh at me and point me in the direction of the nearest toy store.

I want to be someone who goes to the museum and is recognized in the gallery but I’m to afraid. Over and over again I have decided to go to different exhibitions before it opens and then it totally slips my mind until the day after it has been closed again.

I have this old shirt that I had when I did some oil painting twenty years ago. when I try to go trough my stuff in my closet I end up with that shirt in my hands. I always decide to keep it to use when painting and right after the decision I always put it in again, way back in the closet beneath everything and completely forget about it until next time.

My aunt told me that my grandmother loved chocolate and sometimes bought a bar of chocolate to herself, took a bite and immediately throw it on the top shelf of the cupboard. In her opinion it was so good taste that it probably sinful to eat it. I have no memories of her and chocolate, but I have tons of memories including other types of candy and pastries. I recognize this in myself. It is so hard for me to do arty stuff and to really make an effort to grow as an artist. I easily take interest in other things. I am a quick learner and I have been working with so many different things. But when people have been asking me of plans for the future I couldn’t say anything. No dreams or goals. But I have a dream, I know that now, but my subconscious just keeps throwing it to the top shelf so I won’t take it for myself.

I need to take it down and enjoy it instead. I can have good things!

This week we found a place that we are going to move to in September. It is so nice and feels so right and it also is something that I have not been able to picture myself in earlier. A lovely pretty home, a place for an Artist. This time I will put a hook beside my drawing area just for the shirt. But I really can’t picture me introducing myself to the new neighbors as an artist. But I have some months to practice!

Please feel free to leave comments. I want to! I just need to accept that I can enyoj them.

Oh, and I would like to share a pic of the porch to be.

Interesting the way life goes. Yesterday we found a beautiful home to rent with a small garden. Next summer I will have my very own dandelions to draw. The new place is in Skänninge a really old small town. Beautiful with tons of stuff to draw. (Everyplace has that but I really felt the sketch-itch when I walked around the block.)

Today we spent the day with the childrens grandparents again. My four-years-old picked some wild strawberrys and gave to me.

I like dandelions.
I don’t have a garden.
I like yellow.
I like the way the seeds fly.
I don’t have a garden.

This is a food shed built between some rocks in the garden from the previous entry. I would like to take some more time sometime and paint it again because it is really pretty.

Yesterday I took the kids to my in-laws. They enjoy gardening and I enjoy their garden. At first I thought I should draw some flowers individually to really see how just that flower looked. But I was kind of stressed and couldn’t decide what flower to begin with. This is how that ended.

It is warm outside. Hot. Or even hotter if possible.

This morning I took the children out to play right after breakfast. I sat down in the shadow of a big tree and tried to catch the shadow on my daughter who was in the tree pretending that she was flying a big helicopter.

June 6 is our National holiday here in Sweden. It is not a long and well celibrated tradition. I did a sketch of my neighbours flag. I stood on the balcony in the sun, in a hurry as always.

Yesterday the weather was beautiful. Summer at last.

We took some leftover potatos and sallad and went for a roadtrip. I left the pen and everything at home and of course I craved it later.

First in Vreta Kloster, with remains of a medival nunnery. We had lunch and I wanted to paint everyting. Then we went towards home. Just minutes from home the girls fell asleep and we decided to go to Söderköping a good nap away. It is a small town that has kept a lot of the old houses and everyting is so pretty. We went for a walk and after that we had waffels and coffee at Café Lustgården.

Back home I tried to sketch the day.

Had to do another one, get back on track.

Alex is seven years younger than I am. When he was tree or four I got the brilliant idea that I could pay him to tidy up my room. If he took everything up from the floor he earned six coins. The coins was “femöringar”, not in use anymore and hardly worth anything even back then.

The guilt still haunt me. Now and then I try to pay it off and we have talked about it but it is something left. Weird.

A good thing about it is that I am very sensible about what I say to children and how to get them to do stuff. One of the most important things in my opinion (nowadays) is: never lie to children, never dupe or trix them into doing things that I know that they don’t like or that they might dislike in the future. I have my bad days of course.