We’ve been taking the public ferry to and through the archipelago that surrounds Stockholm. Some of the boats are steamers, lovely old boats with thickly varnished wood and crimson velvet seating, chugging back and forth between the city and the far reaches of the outer islands. The round trip may take 3-4 hours. I wish you were here, you’d love it!
Here’s Buck, painted from one of his archive photos. Oh, how I miss him while we’er in stockholm. I’m emotionally dependent on his omnipresent indifference and I don’t even mind when, out of the blue, he’ll hiss and bite the hand that feeds him (that’s my hand.) He’s not the best cat but he’s my cat and I forgive his miscreant ways. Meow.
This painting shows landscape design in the city, the pollarding of a formal grove of trees. Pollarding involves the removal of tree branches to improve the fullness and shape of new growth that will follow. It’s a labor-intensive, tedious practice centuries old.
While we’re in Sweden, Buck the Cat is on his own vacation with his Wisconsin family. He’s doing well, just in case anyone’s wondering. Anyway, there’s this Cat Cafe here in Stockholm. For $20. and the cost of a coffee one is allowed to go into a room for 55 minutes where there’s 7-9 roaming cats, all available for adoption. The cast changes as thedays roll by. I’ve been there twice, fool that I am. I need a kitty fix occasionally. Mostly I watch them play, cavort, fight, eat and sleep. None seem to be lap cats and patrons are warned not to pick them up. Petting and the ear scratch is allowed. I’m getting the cat models I paint there to continue my Daily Cat series. However, I really miss Buck the Cat and there’s no substitute for him.
The Black-headed Gull is a species of the northern Europe and Asia. Their plumage changes seasonally, the example shown here being that of the warmer, breeding months. They’re 11-14″ long and are primarily found close to land. They eat everything. The bird show here was encountered while we sat waiting for a train in Stockholm. Their scientific name roughly translates as ‘laughing gull’.
This is a long view of a Stockholm Avenue, bordered by buildings built in the mid to late 19th c. The city is planned to have wide transit corridors that direct train, car, bike, scooter and pedestrian traffic all along the same path, accommodating each mode safely in parallel. The result is lots of wide urban space without buildings encroaching on it and a sense of openness in what is, in fact, an overall densly built environment. There’s an abundance of trees and flowers in these spaces. Lovely.
https://www.dailypaintworks.com/fineart/jean-krueger/valhallawagen-se/1062388
We walk a lot while we’re in Sweden, usually 5 to 7 miles daily. I’m always looking on the ground for interesting stuff and picked up this pair of little cones. I spent awhile Googling to identify their species, but not much luck, maybe some sort of Piñon. If anyone has an idea, let me know. Thanks.
Stockholm has beautiful street paving. Much of it is granite, a hard material that resists the freezing and thawing that destroys softer pavements. On hills, and there’s many of those, the arced and diagonal patterns prevent slips and sliding. Each stone is four to five inches, a tedious fan shaped mosaic. My shadow breaks the monotony.
This pair of birds float around the waters that surround Stockholm’s islands. Although they’re Mallards, they look different than the North American birds I’m familiar with. They are longer and sleeker and not as iridescent and squat as American mallards. Their bills seem longer, as well. But they behave the same, swimming in a line with the male in front, dabbling with curly tail feathers to the sky.
We walk by this Church with some frequency. It’s named Adolf Fredriks kyrkogard, it’s a cruciform shape, that is, cross-shaped. I really can’t guess its age, maybe 150 years or much older. Anyway, it has a graveyard on one side and the ground is covered with drifts of early spring flowers. they’re call ‘Glory of the Snow’ here, Chionoxdoxa botanically.
We were walking on Easter Monday in Stockholm and the rose was laying in the cobbled street we were crossing. Easter was over, it had done its job and awaited smashing by traffic. I rescued it. It has dried and I, lacking energy to paint more ambitiously, rendered it. Now it will live a bit longer.
https://www.dailypaintworks.com/fineart/jean-krueger/easter-rose/1060940
Jean Krueger Fine Art 