Stockholm, good morning!

Stockholm, chilly winter morning, I take a walk to the job, normally about 45 minutes but today a little more – yes, a bit more actually. I stop every second step just to admire the wonderful pictures around my head. The sky is clear and will become blue within som thirty minutes, there is no wind and the snow sounds funny under my feet, crack, crack, crack.

The light is great. Time to remember.

Stockholm, the same but still something else

Stockholm, Norrbro (North Bridge) is closed because of refurnishing jobs. You can stand here for a while looking down at the whirls of water. Like you can look at and look through a fire. The same fire but all the time new flames. The same river but other whirls of water. It's like life and body. Then you can leave the place and choose another bridge.

Krakow, hero behind glass

Krakow, around the corner I stop staring at a Working Class Hero from 1964 who also looks like that Aryan archetype from 1940. Tall and straight-backed and with a visionary glance, he regards something and still nothing beyond me, far away. At the same time an androgynous, almost feminine line – the lips and eyebrows.

Now it's 2009 and the pale hero behind glass has been reduced to display a blue, short-sleeved shirt that no one want to buy. Shit happens.

London, was anyone there?

London, I put the camera on a a small table. The evening light is weak and I have to use long shutter time for the exposure. That makes people passing appear like transparent, dissolving beings. Like some people I met and separated from long ago and now are remembered only as fragments. The time of the camera shutter and the time you live have a similar influence on people passing.

Lieuran-Cabrières, houses almost eternal

Lieuran-Cabrières, houses, I have been painting so many houses. These warm ochra yellow walls become magical around nine in the evening when the sun has just disappeared behind something, when the atmosphere gets filled with thym and rosmarin, when les cigales play their mechanical never ending tune. Houses that have not changed except a window more or less, and that will not change anymore. Never. Calming, consoling. And let me dream for a while that life is like that – always here and I'm in the middle of it.

Stockholm, in the studio

Stockholm, because the rain is still in the air and because since yesterday the evening arrives one hour earlier than before, I enter my studio looking at some almost forgotten unframed paintings on paper. Hello studio, hello paintings! When focusing at this one, some details step forward and have something to say, so I take a photo. And I publish it in the blog. That's all.

Stockholm, Autumn, Colors and Photoshop

Stockholm, dull weather, rainy. Darkness says hello in mid afternoon. And the worst of all: this is just the beginning. I enjoy the beautiful colors of nature. The splendour of summer is changed into yellow and red. The camera creates copies which can never compete with reality itself. I try some painting in Photoshop. The upper picture is the result of the filter 'dry brush' and the lower one is the original. Printed out it looks quite good. Still for one or two weeks the original is out there, so carpe diem and enjoy!