Iceland Day 2

Hello dear friends and family and anonymous readers around the globe, it's just past 9pm here- I can't ever tell what time it is by looking outside since the sun is up almost 24 hours of the day- but the clock says 9, so I believe it.

Iceland Day 2 is coming to a close and I am extremely satisfied with what's been done so far. First of all, I woke up at 7- which was my goal. I cooked a nice breakfast of rice and raisins (rice was cooked MY way, not the French lady's way) and then headed to the studio to get mix up a palette of colors and start sketching.

Let me explain how this residency works. This particular residency is designed to allow artists of all types live and work in the same area for a focused amount of time. It's like an intense workshop and you're the speaker, presenter, and student all at the same time. I am living in a large farmhouse in rural Iceland, sharing space with two other people who are here for the month. The studio is an old renovated milking barn about 20 yards away from the house- close enough to access but just far enough away to make you feel like you're 'at work' instead of trying to paint in the living room and getting distracted by house business. I applied to be here, sent a resume, included examples of previous paintings and wrote a proposal telling what I'd like to get accomplished while at this residency. My goal, while here, is to get 20 paintings done. I know I can get this many done, but whether I'll like any of them is another question.

So, that's how the residency works- it's like a self-directed art martathon. Personally, I do not do well without a schedule so I wrote out one for myself while here. It looks like this:

7-8: Shower, breakfast, reading/journaling.
8-12: Plein Air (outside) painting
Noon- lunch, coffee,
1-5: in-studio work
5-6: workout, self-care time
7-9: dinner, socializing, blogging, etc.
9: no more technology allowed
10: lights out.

There's two things that might need to be explained.
First, there's the 'workout' time. Well, I have scheduled an hour a day to go to the local workout facility to try to get those Swedish sweet rolls to shrink a little. The facility charges less than $2 a day for total access to their gym, pool, and sauna- it's sweet.

Second, the 'no more technology' part. As you might have guessed, I have a computer and iPhone here and it's really easy to waste time either editing pictures, keeping up with friends, posting ridiculous stuff on Facebook, etc. So, I've put a self-mandated limit on how much screen time I am allowed.

Now, I know it's past nine right now, but I need to break my rule tonight as dinner took a little long tonight. Thanks for understanding.

I sat in the steam room at the gym today. The steam came directly from an underground hotspot and gave off a very sulfurous smell. I learned that chewing gum in the steam room is a really bad idea because, with each breath you breate of the air, your gum tastes more and more like hardboiled eggs. Note to Self: gum doesn't stay minty fresh when you're surrouned by sulfur.

Before going to the gym, I worked in the studio and got one painting done. I don't really care for it, but it's a good baseline indicator of where I am at and, hopefully, I can look back on it at the end of the month and see all the improvement that's been made.

Here's an interesting fact about Iceland: Did you know that there's only 300,000 on the whole island and over half of those people life in or around Reykjavik? This means that the rest of the island is pretty uninhabited. Where I'm at, there's plenty of space to walk, hike, bike, and find places to paint. The only problem with Iceland, that I can find so far, is that it's pretty chilly (feels like late fall), it's cloudy almost all the time, and there's these gross little flies that haunt me wherever I go- flying into my eyelashes and hair. I had a little freak-out moment while hiking in a field today. I walked and swatted at flies and, because of my spastic swatting, I didn't pay attention to where my feet were going and I stepped right into a deep hole of muddy water- soaking my shoe, pant leg, and sock. With a cloud of bugs still trailing me, I did a Tazmanian Devil style spin move and flailed my arms all around me, let out a primitive yowl and then slogged back to the house.

Plein air painters don't live a glamerous life. Either they're getting sunburned, windburned, frost-bitten, mosquito pestered,plagued by gnats, or on a really bad day, all of the aboove. Like today- frost bitten and plagued by bugs. But that's what seperates the men from the boys, you know? You can't make an omlett without breaking a few eggs. In this case, you can't make a great painting without enduring the elements. Well, watercolorists do...but they're a different breed.

Anyway, that's it here. I'm including a little video of me preparing to head out into the wild to paint and a picture of what I got done- don't judge.

Until tomorrow- Viv