This summer, my sister Kathy and I visited Norway. Our mother, who grew up there, emigrated to the U.S. in 1945 after the Nazi occupation. Our family spoke Norwegian and we grew up assuming everyone loved brown cheese and marinated herring.
We traveled three hours north of Oslo to the Hardangervidda National Park for a weeklong Wildpainting course with Jan van Broeckel. Wildpainting is an immersive art course that explores the limits of painting, inspired by the surrounding landscape.
Amid alpine lakes and forests, we painted the landscape, hiked, and swam. It was a memorable experience that deepened our connection to both people and place.
We painted Lake Lognvikvatn from Austbø, beginning with only orange, burnt sienna, and deep violet. Later, we added the natural colors of the woods and lakes, letting the underlying bright hues show through.
Sitting beside a river with our eyes closed. we captured the sounds of the air and sky in white with our left hand and the murmuring of the river in black with our right hand. Then we drew the same scene with our eyes open, aiming to reflect the awareness gained from the first drawing. Finally, we created a painting based on both drawings, incorporating color fields and small details to move towards abstraction.