leaving ricklundgarden...

the sky at 1 a.m. this morning....

It's my last day here at Ricklundgarden, the artist's residency in Northern Sweden where I have been living and working for the past month. Along with my friend and colleague, Janice Mason Steeves, I will fly tomorrow to Stockholm for a few days of seeing the sights, and then to Toronto on the 10th. On the 12th I'll start my drive from her place to Wisconsin and home, sweet home.

It's cold and rainy outside, and a good day for getting ready to leave. Along with packing and cleaning, yesterday we also finished writing one of our co-blog posts--an ongoing project in which we have a conversation about a particular topic. This one is about our time at Ricklundgarden.  Click here to read our thoughts.

It's been a very productive time--I've done almost 70 paintings, most of them small and quick, others more developed. That's a lot to take home and contemplate. Here is a photo of my studio taken a few days ago from the little balcony overhead, and the other showing the view from that balcony window.

There is much to consider about this residency, and I know my views about it will continue to evolve after I leave, and gain some distance on it. The influences may be subtle, woven in with other ideas and experiences, or they may be more direct. The mystery and magic of the intuitive process is that from all that is taken in--visually, emotionally, experientially--what persists and takes on the most meaning over time cannot be predicted.