Marie Jonsson Harrison » painting inspirations

164. ART, TOILETS AND TRAVEL

mariejon — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 09:09:48 +0000

TRAVEL AND ART BLOGS

Today I am continuing the travel and art blog about our adventures in Europe during 2012 and if you would like to recap of what has happened up to this point here are some links with lots of artworks too of course; 156. ART & FREQUENT FLYER POINTS and 157. Art & Never judge a book by it’s cover and 155 The Art of Packing Light

ACRYLIC PAINTING

This acrylic on canvas board painting shows the typical red and white timber cottage in Sweden although I have painted a very small house “stuga” here of course.

We loved our stay in Gothenburg and now we were catching the train for the 7 hour journey north to Sundsvall to visit my cousin Kent and his lovely wife Karin. But of course there is a call of nature to be done before we get on the train so I go for a quick visit to the ladies at Gothenburg train station.

ANOTHER PAINTING INSPIRATION

I opened the door into a small walkway and then tried to open the next one when I heard a cough and a stern voice call out to me, sitting behind some glass in the corner was a very grumpy man demanding money to enter, and he was sort of hidden behind the door. Coming from Australia where all the public conveniences are both plentiful and FREE the Swedish public conveniences was a shock to the system.

Anyway in I go and as I am washing my hands with another 5 or 6 ladies in walks this old woman in her 80’s and lo and behold – suddenly another door opens and in sweeps this grumpy man in amongst the rest of us women in the “ladies only” toilet and belittles this poor woman for not paying. She just like me had probably not seen him on her way in and was not trying to get a free pee, although the way he was acting it was more like she stole the queens silver!

The toilet visits in Sweden seemed rather expensive I thought and just to make it a bit more unpleasant as I later found out most of them are also unisex. Which means that at Stockholm’s Central for example where there are some 30 or so toilets you stand with a huge mixed group of people waiting, something I wasn’t a fan of and then to be ushered into the loo where a strange man with a newspaper under his arm just vacated. Never mind having strangers of the opposite sex staring at you when you retouch your make up, something I found very unsettling. I think some of them didn’t really need to go to the toilet but were just in there to have perve! (My apologies to the lovely men I do know read this who would not behave in this way I know, I am just talking about a few bad apples!) Although these type of moments for an artist provides great inspirations for paintings and sculpture though so you gotta look on the bright side!

LOL, I digress and that’s enough about toilets, anyway we now find ourselves 395km north of Stockholm in Sundsvall, a picturesque town with a population of 50 thousand plus another 45 thousand in the surrounding areas.

THE ART OF TRAVEL

The city has quite a history as it has burned down and been rebuilt four times. In 1721 it was set on fire by the Russian Army in what was called the Great Northern War. The last time was in 1888 when they think the fire was caused by a spark from a steamship, this fire was the largest in Sweden’s history and the town this time was rebuilt out of stone and nicknamed “The Stone City”.

However my cousin Kent lives in a traditional 2 storey timber Swedish house, but instead of it being painted red and white it is blue. Their house is a few kilometers away from the so called city of Sundsvall and about 5 minutes walking distance from both the forest and the water’s edge in an idyllic setting.

THE ART OF A GREAT COOK

Kent picked us up at the station, whilst Karin had gone all out bathing the whole house in candle lights and cooking up an amazing 3 course feast, starting off with a to die for Kantarell soup (a yellow Swedish mushroom that grows in the forest) and is my absolute favourite mushroom! Karin is a wonderful cook and lucky or unlucky for us we only had 3 days with them otherwise I think I would have put on some serious weight! Of course just like in Gothenburg we were spoiled rotten with wonderful sleeping quarters, we had the whole top floor to ourselves and food galore. We also visited their children and their partners and the feasts just continued. My hubby also tried elk for the first time which he enjoyed; the elk had been hunted in the forest by our host’s father. Being a vegetarian myself I found it hard not to think about the poor elk, but tried to comfort myself with the thought that at least he enjoyed a free life in the forest unlike all the cows, calves and pigs etc, that are penned and killed for human consumption every day.

I again felt so well loved and connected to my relatives and my Swedish roots and kept on talking Swedish all the time much to hubbys annoyance, but he coped very well considering.

So here is a quote about languages which I thought fitted well here by Franklin P. Jones;

“It’s a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water”.

Till next time happy Painting and Sculpting and travelling to you all!

Love Marie xxx

Why not come and have a look at Marie Jonsson-Harrison’s PAINTINGS FOR SALE, GICLEE PRINTS FOR SALE and SCULPTURES for sale or WALLBASED SCULPTURES. Enjoy an original artwork on your walls or perhaps one on your bed ARTnBED.

Footnote; Special Congratulations to the little baby boy born today up in Sundsvall to Asa & Tobias, a little brother to Anton, nephew to Kristoffer & Annikki and long awaited grandchild to Kent and Karin.

139 Cruising on the Pacific Jewel & Art

mariejon — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 03:42:11 +0000

THE ART OF THE CRUISE

If you have just joined me now you may want to read the travel and art blog “Leaving Sydney Harbor” as this tale is the continuation. My family and I are now on the Pacific Jewel a P&O ship sailing from Sydney to New Caledonia and Vanuatu, stopping at Isle of Pines, Mystery Island, Lifou and Noumea.

We departed Darling Harbour and set sail under the iconic Harbour Bridge, passing the Opera house and Fort Denison before leaving the Heads in the evening twilight. The entertainment onboard was rocking and the drinks flowing as we turned into a long North-Easterly course towards New Caledonia, initially passing Nobo’s Head and Port Stephens before leaving the mainland astern.

PAINTING INSPIRATIONS

Here is a acrylic painting on canvas that I recently painted dreaming of our cruising holiday.

The Pacific Jewel has a capacity of 1915 passengers and 730 crew, it was built the same year my daughter was born 1991, and for you that loves facts and figures its length is 811ft/245 metres with a gross tonnage of 70,310 tons, draft 8.2 meters and the max speed is 20 knots. Captained by Tony Draper from Scotland and the rest of the senior officers are from England, Italy, Zambia, USA, South Africa, France, India and Bulgaria, so a rich mixture of cultures from all over the world.

The Pacific Jewel can carry the equivalent of five fully laden 747 jumbo jets and is 50% bigger than the Titanic and the same size as the Cunards Queen Elizabeth with a two story show lounge that can seat 800 people. So it is a big ship – a great ship to work on according to some of the crew who told us that they don’t have too far to go to work as compared to the Queen Mary ll where you need to get up and hour earlier just to be able to walk an hour to work each day!! Hard to imagine isn’t it.

THE ART OF BEING GREEN

Anyway after we set sail and had a little rest we dressed for dinner which the silver service restaurant required, smart casual today. Kai’s girlfriend Sam was putting on a brave face and joined us for dinner even though she was looking a little green around the gills – if that is possible for a beautiful Fijian woman! Poor baby, it wasn’t long before she had to excuse herself and retired to her room with green apples and bread rolls for dinner as prescribed by the crew to ward off seasickness.

Next call would have been the on-board Doctors seasickness injections, luckily Sam found some tablets that seemed to keep it at bay as the injections were $120 a pop we later found out. Too bad if you had a real bad case and needed a couple of shoots a day!

THE ART OF THE CHEF

The rest of us enjoyed our 3 course dinner and Hillivi and myself were in heaven – we are both Celiac (gluten intolerant) and vegetarian but that was no obstacle as a special menu was arranged and every need taken care of by our wonderful maître de Eroni Vvetibau (Fijian) and Chef Bupendra (India). It is no wonder that people put on weight on cruises, the food is absolutely magnificent, a wide choice of dishes every night to choose from, everything that you could wish for from every part of the world too. Oh Chef Bupendra I want to take you home!!

We were spoilt rotten by our waiters Rajesh Dzouza (Indian) and Nathan Legaspi (Philippine) with our every need taken care of; they were funny as a fit too with all sorts of tricks! I had no idea that so many things could be made out of serviettes – no idea at all!

THE ART OF THE DIET

There is no wonder that quite a few rather large people were on the cruise – I am not sure what came first though, if they came on the cruise because of their size and leisurely style of holiday or they put on the weight whilst on the cruise because of the wonderful food. All I know for sure is that when you get home you have to diet for a while – oh how boring I hate diets!!

Here is a quote I like by Woody Allen on the subject;

When we lose twenty pounds… we may be losing the twenty best pounds we have! We may be losing the pounds that contain our genius, our humanity, our love and honesty.”

Till next time happy painting and sculpting to you,

Love Marie xxx (c)

123 Still Smoking Hot in Art

mariejon — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 02:18:44 +0000

PAINTING INSPIRATION

This acrylic painting is called “Oh my god, my gown won’t shut I’m showing my butt” and was inspired by my own stay in hospital some years ago. So true isn’t it why do they like you to have your bottom hanging out when you are sick!!!

I woke myself up giggling this morning and just couldn’t stop, lol, you see my mother is in hospital – yes I know that in itself is not funny at all of course, but she is funny, so let me explain.

MUM, ART AND LOVE

My mum is in her 70’s and not that you would ever think that to look at her and she is on the go all the time, still working and running around a million miles an hour. There are lots of things that I like – yes love about my mum and one of those things is her sense of humor, she knows how to take the Mickey out of anything. If there is some fun to be had she will find it and if she cannot find any fun she will make her own and grab me or whoever is near and have a little dance, her favorite the tango.

ARTISTIC IMPRESSIONS

So backtrack to yesterday and my visit to my mother who is in hospital with pneumonia. The pneumonia she has had for quite a few weeks but of course she has not taken to her bed but kept up all her engagements as usual, not missing a beat. When she finally showed up to the Doctor to get her third lot of antibiotics, the Dr decided rather wisely that she had to be admitted to hospital. So there she was in a ward of 6, coughing her lungs up and with oxygen mask attached to her face and a drip with antibiotics in her arm. The other ladies around her seemed much older and some were decidedly ‘off with the fairies’ and that’s where my mum’s hilarious impressions come in.

You see the lady in the bed opposite must be suffering from some kind of dementia because there she is smoking in hospital – not just one cigarette, oh no she puffs on one after the other all day!

My mum did a sterling impression; you see of course you cannot smoke in the hospital so it’s done with either a straw or a red pen. As mum showed, the cigarette is held elegantly in the right hand, and then a big drag of “smoke” is inhaled and blown out again, whereby the ash will then have to be flicked into an empty water-glass on the bedside table. This scenario is repeated continuously throughout the day, so much so that when the TV man came by to see if my mother wanted the television connected she said she didn’t have time for that when there was such an interesting view across the room.

ART AND NUDITY

So Mum had my father, brother and I in stitches with her renditions of this smoking lady but of course there were more tricks to her repertoire! There was of course the undressing – the lady in question obviously did not like clothes much, perhaps she was one who had enjoyed the freedom of the nudist clubs in her past. Well either that or it is just one of these things as you get older and lose your faculties, the thing is at every opportunity the lady took her clothes off. Much to the annoyance of the nurses, who had to turn up at her bedside 18 times a day and put her clothes back on. My mum cried with laughter as she relayed the goings on, and as if that wasn’t bad enough the lady in question liked to lie in the bed with her legs far apart! Mum said it was really lucky for them all that the lady was wearing nappies!

THE ART OF MAINTAINING A GOOD ATTITUDE

Now of course this in itself is very sad for the lady and her family – but I do think my mum is on to something with her attitude. You can either get depressed and think how sad and tragic life is and worry for your own future, I mean my mum is in her 70’s after all. Or you can live everyday to the full and enjoy each minute and find a laugh where it lands without judgement or thought. We all got to die sometime but until then let’s just celebrate and find the humor around every corner and remember that you only live once.

ART AND OLD PEOPLE

My mother in law also made me laugh last time she was in hospital, she was rushed in for another heart attack, number 4 thank you very much! She spent the first few days in intensive care and then was supposed to be put in another ward. However when she heard which ward, she put her foot down and said indignantly “What, there is no way you are moving me up to that ward – that’s full of old people” The funny thing is she is 82 years old, lol, that’s the spirit isn’t it!

So here is a quote that I love on the topic (author unknown)

“Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty & well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, totally worn out & proclaiming; “WOW WHAT A RIDE!”

Till next time happy painting and sculpting and laughing to you all,

Love Marie xxx

Here is a link where the painting can be viewed on my website Paintings for sale.

(c)

9. Bike ride over the Golden Gate Bridge & ART (continuing tales of San Francisco)

Marie — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 04:59:41 +0000

MORE ART BLOGS

On this detail below from the painting “I love San Francisco”, you can see Golden Gate bridge and here is a link to the whole artwork and the art blog called 6. San Francisco where this tale begins,followed by 7. More tales from San Francisco and if after you read this and still want more here is the last installment in this paintings blog 17. The Jail Bird in Alcatraz (the last bit of the San Francisco tales).

FOOD IN MY PAINTINGS AND IN MY STOMACH

So after all that stuffing of our faces, we had to get some exercise in, so of we trotted up and down nearly every street of this fair city, and zig zagged down the crookest road in the world, all the while with one eye behind us (well…the Muni Stabber..remember!)

I had to see firsthand all the places that I had previously painted and found Pier 39 and after a little walk-about there, decided to bicycle across the Golden Gate Bridge, found ourselves a very Happy Chappie who enthusiastically sold us on the idea of using his company, a bike each and helmets (yuck hat hair).So we were ready to go with a water bottle, map in hand, when the Happy Chappie told us the entire bike ride from the pier across the bridge to Sausalito and then the ferry back would be no more than one and a half hours max.

THE ART OF THE CON

Yea Right! We were skeptical before we set off, but hey nothing ventured nothing gained right? So off we go, and boy I am glad we did, fantastic experience, peddled our butts off and had so much fun, but even without more than a couple of photo stops it took 3 hours to reach Sausalito. What he had also neglected to tell us was that the ‘you beaut’ ferry only went a few times a day and the next one was not due for another hour and a half, and by the time we got on it, it was pitch black.

The saga didn’t end there either for this little ferry did not go back to Pier 39, oh no this one went to the SF Harbour proper, with a 20 minute bike ride in the dark. So 6 hours later we finally got back to the still very enthusiastic hire fellow, as luck would have it, ran a 24 hours a day bike return, although funnily enough we had to pay by the hour! Well what could you say apart from, Thank you, we had a lovely day! Lol There certainly are many more paintings & paintings blogs inspirations here!

Here is another quote I like from J.P. Donleavy(writer);

“When you don’t have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it’s sex. When you have both, it’s health. If everything is simply jake, then you’re frightened of death”

How True!

Till next time, happy painting and sculpting everyone,

Love Marie

(To be continued) (c)