German Hygge Day

Yes, I know Hygge is Danish. But it’s better than Gemütlichkeit

Today was a good day! I think the sugar anxiety is finally wearing off. Ever since I had COVID in late December last year, when I eat sugar I have about three days of anxiety, sadness and general malaise. On the up side, I know what it is and can figure out a work around until my stomach is better. On the DOWN side, we’re rocking up on December again with all the tempting treats at the Christmas parties. Hmm. I guess I will abstain, otherwise I will be a weepy mess during Advent. So not good.

ANYWAY – – Today was a good day! I woke up in a good mood after a really fun superhero dream where I took out the bully threatening my friend. Exercised for an hour, then came back to our lovely house and decided to take it easy and pamper myself. I’m having a Hygge day. Or is that Tag.

Now, if I was a trendy influencer, now’s when I would lay out all of my facial creams, brushes made of rare possum hair, marble lymph combs, etc. and so forth. Maybe an adorably expensive hand-knitted sweater by a super Etsy merchant.

But I’m sixty one. And retired. So my hygge day looks vastly different. Isn’t that the best part? No one wants to be a cookie cutter of the cool girl. Well, unless you’re fourteen, then it’s mandatory.

I am many things, but probably cool is not the first word that comes to mind. Because the start of my day, after my exercise and shower, consists of putting on what I call my Nordic Elf outfit. (Don’t worry, I’m not insane, I don’t REALLY look like an elf. The outfit makes you FEEL like one, which is the best of all worlds.)

I am wearing brown leggings, a red t shirt and a long, gray Men’s XXXL three button v- neck sweater that comes down to the top of my knees. I love it. I saw all these icy, beautiful Finnish actresses – good gosh, I have a full mix of the European countries for my Hygge day – in the series Sorjonen, or Bordertown. They had on these beige leggings and thin long sleeve tops for pajamas, and they’d just throw a cool men’s sweater over everything as they sipped their coffee and discussed murder in the middle of the night when the father/husband/detective came home from working a crime scene. Or killing someone who needed killing.

Take a look, none of these women would be caught dead in a flowery flannel robe with a tie. Great role models for my Scandi Noir loungewear. And great show, if you’re looking for something to binge watch as the nights grow longer.

And here’s my little sweater, straight off of Ebay for $27. Perry Ellis, new with tags!

I look like a very cool, calm, collected and comfortable Scandi axe murderer. Or that’s what I’d like to think. Pretty sure the elf shoes ruin it.

Again, not REAL elf shoes, but close enough. My Bavarian house shoes that I buy on my trips back to Germany, in a great little place in Berchtesgaden. I’m sure they laugh about the American lady who buys the cheapest Oma shoes in the house rather than the beautiful felt ones with flowers. But the Oma at the gasthaus where we stay each trip wore these on her arthritic feet as she laughed and beamed while pouring Hefeweizen bier behind the bar. She’d come out and sit at the tables with the young and middle aged German men and slap their arms when they said something rude, smiling and rolling her eyes. She always tried to talk to me, but my German was not good enough for a real conversation. My shoes are my little tribute to her and the wonderful old school Germans who seem to be vanishing a little more each year. Here’s hoping this Duolingo helps and she’s still around when I go over in May.

ANYWAY, #2. Come on, they’re sort of cute. Well. They’re warm. And comfortable. BEQUEM SHUHE! And as part of my COVID angst, I special ordered a few more pairs when I realized travel was off the table for the foreseeable future. Yes, as you read yesterday, I have a small hoarder gene somewhere in my DNA. Nyx is thrown in to make these mundane little shoes a bit more interesting. And to distract you from the crazy fact that I buy identicals in multiples. These three pairs will last me fifteen years or so. Here’s hoping my tastes don’t change.

Let’s distract you a little more. To continue with my Northern European theme, I had homemade sweet potato spiced bread and homemade chicken bone broth for lunch. Okay, it’s not brotchen and wurst, but, more importantly, it’s paleo and gluten free. Fits the latest diet we’re trying so that I can perhaps have a SMIDGEN of chocolate on Christmas Eve while I’m reading my book in bed, Icelandic style. Jolabokaflod. That’s a mouthful.

I worked on editing a friend’s second book this afternoon with a cup of haggebutte (rosehip) tea. I even had it in a little German mug I bought at the Real supermarket in Weiden, I think.

Just call me kitschy. But I can’t help myself. And on a day like today, I’m so glad I bought it and packed it well enough to make the trip home. Fortunately, my haggebutte tea is not fragile, since I crammed that one into my carry on. Until I can get back over, my cute Faux German ware will have to suffice. Hard to believe it’s been just over four years since our last jaunt to the motherland.

And while I’m editing, GUESS WHAT SHOWS UP AT THE DOOR! A bribe from the author, Brad Huestis, who must want me to wrap it up so he can finalize over the holidays. Boy, he knows me well. Take a look. Okay, the way I figure it, if I save the chocolate until Christmas Day NIGHT, I will only be depressed and weepy for the period before New Years Eve. Which is sort of natural, right? Right?!? Dark chocolate and marzipan, my delicious, irresistible Kryptonite. Come to Mama.

Many thanks to Brad, author of Ahab: A Hockey Story. I really enjoyed editing his first book about a young paratrooper stationed in Germany. Night jumps, Oktoberfest, Bavarian hockey teams and life in the Army. Hmmm. Might be the perfect book to reread at the end of my German Hygge Day. Now, excuse me, I’m off to grab a little bowl of my homemade sauerkraut. Probiotics are GOOD for the stomach. And will maybe help me resist the temptation of the chocolate box.

(Oh, who am I kidding. I’m going to have to ask my husband to hide the damn things. Umm, Brad, please don’t let my TEMPORARY sugar fast stop you from sending MORE chocolate as my editing progresses. I can hoard them in a pile and lie on them like Smaug, the dragon in Lord of the Rings. Now there’s a picture. )

My favorite among my paintings

Or another good title would be German Expressionism meets my favorite vacation spot.

My husband gave me art lessons when I turned fifty. The neighbor down the street is an artist extraordinaire, painting large, beautiful, moody oils – but she also mentored students at a local school and taught art classes for homeless people so she was perfect for the scared, timid beginner. I could give a closing argument or impromptu speech at the drop of a hat, but put a paintbrush in my hand and I felt exposed, vulnerable and just generally unsure. Like a gray haired Bambi on new legs.

She started me out with small still lifes, helping me mix colors, hold my brush correctly and look at my subject with eyes narrowed, through my eyelashes to see shapes and sizes, and also to step away from my canvas – or even turn it upside down! – to see what was missing or out of place. An hour went by like five minutes, I was mesmerized and hypnotized. And SUPER happy.

After a few more paintings, I decided to try working from a photo of my favorite place in the world – Maria Gern, in Berchtesgadenerland – the alpine area of Germany. My husband and I would stay at the same little holiday apartment every year, on the third floor of a local gasthaus, we dined downstairs each evening. The area was crossed with easy and hard hiking trails, and you would see the Germans on holiday walking with their dogs, sticks and thick woolen socks. Germans of ALL ages, from kids to Omas and Opas with sticks, they all kept moving up and down the hills.

And benches. Benches were everywhere, so you could rest a minute and enjoy the view. My favorite bench, at the bottom of the hill from the gasthaus, overlooked a pasture filled with cows, and a creek and small farm chapel, with a backdrop of deep blue-green spruces and pines. The sound of the creek, with the cowbells and wind through the boughs – talk about mellow. I could have levitated off that bench in sheer contentment, if I’d only tried a little harder. I sort of have a thing for benches, full or empty, as you can see. They are interesting to me – hard to paint, sometimes, but I like a challenge.

Sorry, I had to throw the beer one in there, my favorite shot from our favorite table.

ANYWAY, back to my favorite German expressionist style. I love the Blaue Reiter group, made up of Wassily Kandinsky, Gabrielle Munter, Alex Jawlensky, Franz Marc, Marianne Werefkin and August Macke, among others. Here’s just a sampling of their prolific output.

So I worked and worked on my little bench, I mixed the colors, I painted slowly and tried to find a way to improve every day until I hit a wall. Well, actually, two walls.

One – I went a LITTLE too expressionist. As my cousin David Boyd, Jr. says – he’s a well known artist here in the South, lots of plein air work – you have to know the rules to break the rules. I didn’t know that a shadow on green grass wasn’t blue, or lavender, but a different shade of green. So that solved my shadow problem. But I couldn’t quite make the grass hill part look like a hill. David took a look at it a second time during one of his classes. (Yes, I am the type of nerdy painter that carries my paintings TO the seminar to get extra help. Ugh.) He kindly let me in on another rule I should have known – as green moves back to the background on the GROUND, you add red to it. And when green moves back to the background as a vertical – mountains, trees – you add blue to it to give the distance.

So, here’s where I started. Sorry, these were taken on an old phone, the camera – she was not so good.

And here’s where I ended up. This was the first painting I put into a show, I was SO EXCITED to see it on the wall with people walking by looking at it. It’s not the realist style that is super impressive, but it’s warm, evocative and I hope you can feel the simple GLADNESS of that resting space. I have it in my bedroom now where I can see it when I read in the morning. It’s called October Vespers. And even now, I look at it and think I fricking NAILED that shadow on the top right and the sunlight thorough the leaves, turning them peach and warm yellow.

I also see some things I might have wanted to improve until another art mentor told me that if you make it too perfect, your personality disappears and it’s just a plain picture. So – I love you just the way you are, little painting! You never forget your first good one.

Painting Figments and Fairy Tales

I’ve got two for you today, and a bonus. First, the figment and fairy tale, two paintings that I completed in 2020. One is on my wall, and the other on the wall of a friend. Maybe. (I mean, you can give a hostess gift, but you can’t control where it ends up! Hopefully, where someone will see it. Like in the living room! Or maybe the bathroom. Hmm. Better than the basement or a closet, I guess.)

This one on my living room wall, placed strategically near a lamp ( the title is Hacienda of the Rising Sun for obvious reasons) started out as a line across a canvas. I prepare my canvases with a rough wash of acrylic mustard color, so the white isn’t quite as in your face taunting you to try to paint something on the blank cold canvas. (Really, that’s how it feels. Daunting stuff.)

So I loaded up my paintbrush and drew the line that ended up being the mountain outline and the side and roof edges of the ‘hacienda.’ Unfortunately I didn’t take a photo of that line, but I remember it well. I spent HOURS trying to see the rest of the painting to go with that line. The challenge was figuring out what I could make from the line and then picking colors, shadows and lights that made sense. I overpainted this one, definitely. Over and OVER. But it still has one of my favorite spots, that little line of green next to the purple green in the shadow of the mountain. Whenever I do something like that, I end up having NO IDEA how it happened. A happy accident. But at least I knew enough to LEAVE it.

Where it started, and two middle shots. Hmm. I really wanted that tree in the foreground to cover up some of that fluorescent green, as you can see from the top photo. Maybe I shouldn’t have added in the branch shadows on the wall. Sigh. But I digress.

On one of my trips back to Germany, I bought a gorgeous antique photography book and decided it would be fun to paint and colorize some of them.

In my eternal optimism, I thought it was a great chance to pick and mix colors and figure out what works. And, more importantly, what doesn’t. My end product was a bit, um, colorful, and I added in some snow colored mountains on either side to shore up some egregious mistakes. So it ended as more Chitty Chitty Bang Bang perfect world than the actual pretty little area near Austria. Here are the takes and final result. It’s very, umm, fairy tale. Coincidentally, I LOVE fairy tales.

This one ended up with a good friend Erik in West Virginia who hosted us for a week of vacation during the COVID year of no overseas travel. Instead of eating wurst and schnitzel, our normal repast in October, we sat on his front porch and looked at the view – the mountains, his chicken coop, sweet dog Petey and our beer and wine glasses on the rail. Great way to decompress. His house is a large pine cabin, and I think this ended up next to his German cuckoo clock – perfect since we travelled around Germany together when all of us were stationed there. Or maybe it migrated to the bathroom. Or basement!

I am fortunate – married couple friends of ours PREFER my more colorful landscapes. I don’t think they were pulling my leg, because they saw all of them and picked this super colorful Regensburg one for their house. Jennifer said she liked cheerful landscapes and they were really hard to find. She hung this one in the alcove of her kitchen and it DID suit. Jennifer and Mike were also neighbors in Germany, when we lived about an hour and a half from this exact spot.

Hmm, should have had better lighting for that last show. Oh, well. Now this little painting is in Texas. So far, I have paintings with friends in Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Canada and California. I need to give some to our friends in Germany and New Zealand, I guess, then I can claim to be an international artist. Or does that mean I PAINT in all of those countries. Because that would be even more fun!