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Stockholm, Sweden, has a wonderful large park. Nestled in between the trees behind Skansen is a royal summer palace, Rosendal, with its garden. The garden is now a nursery, both commercial and with the aim to preserve old varieties of roses and other flowers. The café has delicious cookies and other edibles. Spending some time there with a friend in late summer, I'd brought my "Plein Air Stealth Kit", and sat on a bench painting a small quick sketch of the Orangerie:



The building is very beautiful, and while this plein air sketch isn't going to make art history, I used it as the basis for the studio work at the top of this blog post, the Rosendal's Orangerie. (Satellite image http://kartor.eniro.se/m/Mvblq, right under the blue line, a bit lower on the image.)I chose another angle, with a field with rows upon rows of mostly yellow flowers, with a row of red ones just before my feet. Being "colour-starved" in bleak midwinter, I escaped to this warm golden day.

See a large version of the studio painting here.

If you want this painting, you'll get the sketch too, included.

Being at the opening of a show is important, and I had quite and adventure going there. I was all "dolled up" and ready to roar, and the car decided to refuse to start that particular morning... What to do, when the venue was on the other side of town, and there was the opening ceremony one couldn't miss? Luckily, the neighbour was just going into town, so I hitched a ride, left Hubby with the car to charge the battery. Found a taxi, and it got me there just in time.

After a speach by the boss of the place, Ricardo Donoso (in smaller picture below), and before another by a local politician, they asked all the artists to step up to the front, and tell our names and where our paintings were hung. (Yours truly in red, with green scarf, listening to politician. Funnily, the only other person not dressed in black happened to stand next to me.)



Ah, an opportunity to tote the horn for pastels! So when it was my turn, I projected my voice (choir practice), and said: "Hi, my name is Charlie, and I paint in Soft Pastels in one of the impressionist techniques, and it hangs over there." A CV in just one sentence, and promoting soft pastels too! Economical.

The opening day had many visitors, the next shots were taken towards the end of the day, when there was room to take pictures.



And to my joy, the painting is reserved for a collector!

Having spent 3 weeks on exhibiting, writing, and other 'stuff', both art-related and not, I could no longer hold back the urge to paint.

The short and oh-so-glorious time when the leaves blazes in the landscape, a country road, wind rustling the leaves, the sun golden and still warm on your cheek. Just a few days later, the leaves will have blown off, the sky be cloudy, but this golden moment captured in sparkling pastel will stay forever and warm the heart.

See a larger version of the painting by clicking here.

Reference photo courtesy of Tatiana Myers.