It's all coming together now.

Wednesday:

Good Afternoon on the most stunningly beautiful Icelandic sunny day. 

It truly felt like spring as I walked to and from the studio with no gloves.... yes, this may seem a small and unimportant detail in the big scheme of things, but it's the first time since I arrived that I haven't been out in thermals, hat, scarf, gloves, boots and with my hood up!

last bit of sun today on the beach

I had a lovely lunchtime with 2 girls from the local school who are looking at some photography techniques over the next couple of weeks with me. After my dismal efforts at pronouncing their names (which I failed..) we decided to work on painting with light. They got the concept and method so quickly and were making images within half an hour of our initial discussion. I'll put them on here once I've asked for permission.

I have spent the rest of the day walking and making abstract pieces using only my camera. I am trying to get it 'right' in camera so I am reducing and reducing the editing time. For both purist and aesthetic reasons. I'm not there yet, but I am happy with around 5 of those I made. Here's a couple. The only editing is exposure and crop.

I really like these and would love to see them printed big. There's so much detail to bring out. Quite interesting to paint as well - if I could paint...! They are much compressed, but you can see the possibilities. Comments more than welcome...

Friday:

It's jumped to Friday and I am just about recovering from too many wines.... Having hardly had anything to drink since arriving, the assault on my body, my mind and to be honest, every fibre of my being of alcohol by the truckload, has had, shall we say, a detrimental effect. 

Firstly, yesterday began as a bright and beautiful day for walking. The mountain was glorious with a cotton wool halo moving around for most of the day on its head. Some artists walked virtually to the top, but alas, the ice was too slippery as they got above the snow level. I wandered for hours along the coast, trying to replicate the feel of the image above. I decided that the only one worth having is the third one. The others are not good enough. I wanted to recreate the detail, subtlety and complexity of it and that's what I walked and photographed for 4 hours. I got maybe 2 images I was happy with, but none that I feel matched this one. 

These are the best abstracts straight from camera yesterday:

These are just from my phone to give an idea of how idyllic it was yesterday.

Then last night happened......

At 6pm I had a message that the aurora were out and they were amazing!! Really bright and not what the prediction said at all. I didn't have my tripod, but quickly grabbed a few hand held shots. This was one of those occasions where just watching them was enough. This is a picture from the back of my camera. It shows how bright they were.

And then.....

Toti, the local (and only) restaurant/bar owner did a fish and vegetarian buffet for a group of around 10 of us. It started quite nicely around 7pm and the food was exceptional. For Iceland, the price of around £17 per head was very reasonable, but as we had to then pay for wine/alcohol on top of that, I thought I would be measured, careful and mature.

I wasn't.

I can't even begin to own up/work out how much it cost, but for those of you who know me well, imagine how many wines I can consume over a long evening or at a party, then throw in a few more for fun and then add into the equation the fact that I hadn't been drinking for most of January. So once you have this number in your head - of glasses - times it by 7, and that's the number of pounds..... Suffice to say I have suffered all day, even after drinking gallons of water once home and lying on the kitchen floor unable to move. 

The highlights were:

Sophie's singing (on her birthday!)
Me beating the local Neo-Nazi (self declared) at pool (I didn't know this when I agreed to play)
having amazing conversations with weird and wonderful people
hearing someone sing karaoke who had backed BB King and Stevie Wonder
meeting a Scandinavian running an artist residency in upstate New York
spending good quality time with some fabulous artists
Walking back along the coast, freezing but happy

Gives new meaning to the old insult 'specky 4 eyes'

The Wonderful Michael and Sophie. It was Sophie's birthday today

Luccia beautiful and amazing Slovakian artist and me before I was palatic  (as they say up home)

It's always good to know that someone else is at least as bad as you....
Introducing: Eleanor,  room mate extraordinaire. Bostonian, minimalist, liberal, funny, mad, cat lady and all round good egg. Can't believe she's leaving Sunday....

Today is another day.

I will leave this here I think. Tomorrow we have Open House, which is an informal exhibition of work in progress. I can't put anything up as the ink and paper I ordered hasn't arrived yet. I'll probably project some images and just chat to people.

Thank you for reading. Just as a ps, I'd like to add that drinking copious amounts of alcohol, also creates bad food cravings, and after being really good and eating healthily, so far today I have consumed:

3 slices toast with 3 eggs, avocado and feta cheese (with the mould cut off...)
5 cups of coffee
5 cups of tea
2 massive bars of Milk Creme Caramel
1 large fries from the garage
1 bottle of tango

and I'm not finished yet...

Sleep well,

Love,

Aly x