“People wearing their national dresses symbolise unity. A research conducted on this subject showed that youngsters wearing traditional clothes, irrespective of western pressure, had fewer behavioural and emotional problems. The reason being that they are in touch with their ancestral culture, religion and traditions and thus not confused about their identity or who they are.” Makes sense to me; feeling like you belong and have a community is very important. Nowadays, I think many of us feel a part of many different groups, because we live in a globalised world, and clothing can be changed, thus changing your identity. Maybe that makes our traditional and national dresses even more special? ❤
Here is the link to the study for anyone interested. It also sheds a light on the dangers of not allowing indigenous peoples to use and wear their own clothings, as we have seen happen all over the world.
Sámi man in gákti with reindeer pants and mittens. The shoes are nuvttohat, skaller, nutukas.. many names for same shoe. Different languages and dialects. Photo by Lola A. AkerströmKautokeino Sámis. Guovdageaidnu in Northern Sámi language. Wearing pesks and gáktis. With traditional shawls, belts, mittens and hats. Northern Lapland/Sápmi. Khanty woman Kristina Neva and baby in reindeer clothing with decor. Summer on the Arctic tundra. Photo by Bryan and Cherry Alexander.
My latest painting 🤍❄A little hare lives close by…🐇2021 in paintings 💙My winter solstice and Christmas outfit. An Alta/Loppa/Kvænangen-kofteinspirered Sami dress. Sewn by Nadezda Johnsen, colours and fabric chosen by me 💙❤🧡💛“New” wall decor.. My old sweater made by my grandma for me when I was little, and my old skaller.Knits also by my grandma. This was before the polar night.Amazing mosaic by Marit Bockelie in Tromsø.A few sunrays below the horizon. Midday 💙🧡💛Lights in the city.
December went by fast, only a week left of 2021. Today is Christmas eve, and we get to celebrate it with fresh snow, but most importantly; with our son, whose first Christmas it is. Wishing you all a peaceful and magical time, with lots of rest and good meals. Xx
This is the “place” I went to in my imagination before and during giving birth. It was cold and silent, and this is where I could go in my mind to gather strength and breathe fresh crisp air. I could also clearly see our son there the whole time, sitting close by, waiting to be born 💙🧡
20 x 20, in daylight. Looks glossy from the wet varnish. No filter here, just sunlight 🌤🙏🏻Indoors lighting, before I added a few more white details. I know it’s “bad luck” to make adjustments after signing it, but it was missing something! The top photo is the finished result 🤍
This is # 1 of 6 in a small series I plan to make, all same size.
Our sweet little boy 🖤 My wool sweater knitted by grandma.
Being a mama has really opened my heart, not just for our child, but for all children. I have always loved the little new humans obviously, but being a parent takes it to another level somehow. Truly an automatic bodhicitta practice; infinite love and boundless compassion – our true nature.
Here are some beautiful motherhood art pieces I really like. Hope you enjoy them as much as I do! 🥰
Art by Germaine Arnaktauyok, “Quiet Time”, 2005Art by Mayoreak Ashoona, “Matching braids”, 1991
Not a painting or art print, but traditional Sámi komse (baby carrier). Truly an art piece in itself, with every woven band having a meaning. Art by Emily KewageshigArt by Alanah Jewell
How has motherhood changed you? Has it opened your heart (more)?
For the past 11 years or so, I have been teaching myself how to relax and be calm.
I have always been quite a worried person, so I feel I had to learn this in order to simply have a better life with more control. I still sometimes forget how to, but each time I remember, I do the following:
An easy quick way to instantly relax the mind and muscles, causing bloodflow to spread more evenly in the body, is to do three things simultanously: relax the jaw and eyes completely, breathe deeply into belly for at least 8 breaths and move the inner gaze/attention to the feet or ground below. Get a sense of the Earth. Notice the effect.
Another way, if you have the oppotunity, is to lay down flat, do the same with jaw and eyes, and to focus on the in and out breaths in the belly. Take deep slow breaths. Imagine them as waves ebbing on the shore.
And lastly, going into nature of course has a calming effect too, even just for 10 minutes. If you cannot go outside, perhaps painting or drawing nature is an idea.
Hope this helps! I truly believe knowing how to relax and calm our selves is an important skill. Getting carried away by the storm can be both painful and result in regrets.
Mårrakaffe og nydelig lilla tulipanKan ikke huske sist jeg laga påskeris ❤💛💚🤍💙Ingen påske uten gule (og noen lilla) tulipaner. Sola titter også oftere frem!
Was so lucky to receive this traditional Sámi bracelet from my partner’s mum as a gift “for giving her the greatest gift” (our son, her grandson) 🖤
It is made from black leather, reindeer antler button and decoration, and the braids are traditional tinwire used in duodji/daidda. It is made by @tinntraadfruen on instagram if you want to see her work 💫
What was a gift you received that had a nice meaning behind it?
The Sun is properly back, and giving us all sorts of moods with her play of light. Like brushstrokes.Afternoon.My friend Flo.We are making a short film. Stay tuned! 🥰Same landscape, different season.
A little snow leopard put her print in the snow 🐾 Tara dancing in the snow next to it ❄10 x 10 cm. Colours used: white, blue and copper/gold.Our Christmas altar. Put my new painting there next to Vajrasattva statue.‘During practice, the Buddhas and bodhisattvas are omnipresent. They’re always here, but we don’t see them because of our obscurations. We practice in order to clear away the obscurations and to acquire pure perception—not with the eyes, but with the heart.’ ❤🙏🏻
The copper coloured mountain is also known as Zangdok Palri; Guru Rinpoche Padmasambhava’s non-physical pure land.
My favourite painting from last year 💙🧡💛💜 Acrylic on canvas.
“An amateur (literally means ‘lover [of something]’) is generally considered a person who persues a particular activity or field of study independently from their source of income/does not persue it professionally or with an eye to gain.” 🎨
Visited the beach in Sandvika twice in oct and nov before polar night; once to take the photograph and once to try and paint outdoors, but it started raining so finished it finally now in the first day of January 😁
Acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 cm 🌅 Colours used: blue, yellow, orange, purple, gold and white. Varnished with waterproof UV protection spray.
“Just like water, snow and ice, life is always shifting, changing forms.” (This photo is from february 2017). Beautiful texture and shapes in the frozen water.
One of my paintings inspired by the icy landscape:
Click to see bigger versionsMy little pregnant polar bear. Wrote a post earlier about this painting 💜 Here she is framed.
Kjøpte noen kjempesøte små trehjerter på Flying Tiger for en ukes tid siden. De er vel egentlig for å bruke som gavelapper, men de funker også tydeligvis bra til å male på 😁🙌🏻🎨🎄❄
Come see my little exhibition of 13 paintings at Magic Ice Tromsø ❄ Most paintings are for sale 🙏🏻 They also have the cosiest tiny coffee place there, an impressive ice sculpture gallery by Lithuanian artists and a cocktail bar – all ice, even the glasses ☃️🥂🌌
This leaf survived in my bag for weeks, on planes and buses (from some travels in february, I hope to find time to share some photos with you soon!) Only a bit broken in the edges 💜💙💚 Turned out great as canvas for a little landscape painting🎨🍁
Some of the last rays of sun on my summer paintings before november and polar night comes 🗻🎨🌞This one is new, made two days ago. 20 x 15 cm (I think!)A winter painting snuck in there as well!
75 x 30 cm. Painting on such a long canvas was new for me! Here it is just finished in the very poor light of my living room.Close up details. I make clouds with make-up brush.My work station 🙂Before I added the plants.In daylight. This was before the snow came!Displayed in an app showroom, just to show in different setting. Happy with the new painting 💙🙏🏼
Traditional headdress by me, shawl hand-me-down. Photo by Sebastian Wilches 2020.
Some things I truly believe are yours to keep, that no one can take from you:
Your spiritual practice. In my case, it is vajrayana buddhism. It has saved my life in many ways – both in dealing with chronic illness, but also the normal existential stuff like finding purpose and joy 🙂🙏🏼📿
Your ambitions and dreams (if they come from a place of pure motivation and love). In my case now, it has been starting a little family with children 💜🤱
Your ethnicity and ancestry, no matter how lost or scattered it is in this modern world. In my case from my personal experience, I feel very connected to my home in the Arctic and being uralic/finno-ugric. I didn’t as a kid and teenager, at all, but now as I am older, I feel like I can “own” it more. I don’t speak any of the uralic languages, and feel a sadness about this. A disconnection from my own culture. And a feeling of not belonging to a community, when they can’t speak to me. I hope my son will not feel as disconnected. But I have found other ways to express this – primarily through art and duodji. Not all languages are of verbal nature, but are equally important, I think. 🎨
Your creativity. Not necessarily arts, but anything you find a solution to that involves stepping out of the habitual intellectual mind and into a state of spontaneity and flow.🌊
Your struggles. This sounds negative, but for me I mean that my struggles are valid. I have a body that has its big share of physical problems, and I don’t mean to whine. At all! 🙂 Just to express that this is my reality, and that chronic (perhaps invisible to others) illness can happen to anyone, any time in life.💙
Your love. This one sounds cheesy but I think we all can feel love and that we have love as a basic human need. To receive it and give it. And we all have different ways of showing it. I like giving gifts for example.. but am not so good verbally expressing how I feel. I like receiving kind loving deeds, but not to be smothered. So understanding how we show it differently is important too. I also believe that as humans we have the capacity to love many at the same time. Whether it is friends or partners, plural. Romantic, familial or platonic.❤
Did you know there is a reason why orange+blue and yellow+purple work together so well? 🧡💙💛💜 They are considered complementary colours! “Complementary colours are pairs of colours which, when combined or mixed, cancel each other out by producing a grayscale colour like white or black. When placed next to each other, they create the strongest contrast for those two colors. Complementary colours may also be called ‘opposite colours’.”
Very small and cute painting framed in a 10 x 15 cm frame. This little painting took me ten minutes to make, I wanted to make it without thinking too much; just go with the brushstrokes 🌬🧡🍂
32 x 24 cm, acrylic on multimedia paper“Dvale”. Means hibernation. Only pregnant polar bears hibernate 💙 was hard to paint her intirely inside the den, so she is just laying at the entrance waiting for her cubs.
“During the fall, if a polar bear is pregnant, she digs a den into a snow drift. She then climbs into the hole and stays there to give birth and care for her cubs for the first few months of their life. She and her cubs will not emerge from the den until the spring. Male bears and non-pregnant females continue to roam and feed throughout the winter.”
One of the absolute top animals on my list I wish to see in my lifetime.. Guess I need to head up to Svalbard for that!
Another round piece.. 35 cm Ø Details.. I love using dark purple, it really brings some life to it 💜Some sort of yellow fantasy flowers 🌾In process..
Happy to be back to painting since rearranging the flat. It’s been a mess for months, but now it’s starting to look and feel much better and I got my work/painting/crafts station back!🙌🏻🎨🌼
Summer has finally arrived in the Arctic, kind of. Still some snow around, but also green and some flowers!🌿🌻 Didn’t realise how much I missed some warm weather, although I absolutely love winter.
Ramma inn dette bladet jeg malte for litt siden 🍁🎨Plantene mine ☺Kunst.Gjorde en giveaway i påska, her er det lille maleriet mitt (til høyre) i sitt nye hjem ☺ Fikk en fin håndlagd gave!✨Dagboka mi 🦄 Elsker å skrive og føler det hjelper mye å få ting ned på papir. Også er det er pluss om den er søt.
Kom meg ut en tur idag i finværet 🌞 Fortsatt kaldt, men mye lysere og snøen har begynt å smelte for fullt. Anskaffet meg en fredslilje. De er kjent for å være luftrensende. Elsker å omringe meg med planter. Håper jeg klarer å holde den i livet 😄🌿4 små 15 x 15 cm lerret. Skal prøve å lage en liten sesongserie; et maleri av sommer, av høst, vinter og vår!Solskinn og et ikonbilde fra Bulgaria.Loke på sjeselongen 🐶
Me and my little racer car, Laura.Grøtfjord beach.
Just updated my domain and header. All in all, still the same blog with same content; art, photography, occasional personal thoughts and ideas, adventures, health related stuff and maybe some tantra/dharma. The name Ask the mountains comes from my favourite song by greek artist Vangelis and swedish singer Stina Nordenstam.
Acrylic on canvas from last summer.Photo by @tobiasvisuals So cute. Widowed penguins in Melbourne.
Some cool penguin facts for world penguin day:
– There are currently 17-26 types of penguins, depending on definition (I read many conflicting definitions). Emperor, adélie and macaroni penguins being my favourites 😁
– Male penguins searches their habitat for the perfect stone to present their chosen female. They mate for life and they both take care of their offspring.
– Penguins are defined as birds although they cannot fly. Their wings are made for swimming. They are great in water, but a bit awkward on land.
– Penguin feathers are shorter and stiffer than most bird feathers, which makes penguins more streamlined in the water and traps more air to keep them warm.
Southern rockhopper penguin, native to the Falkland Islands. Amazing photo 😄👌🏻Macaroni penguins. The most abundant penguin species.Emperor penguins. Tallest of the penguin species. “These penguins nest almost exclusively on Antarctic sea ice, making them the only bird species that never sets foot on land.”My little emperor penguin painting. Mother and baby.Fairy penguins, native to New Zealand. Adélie penguins, small and fierce.
As soon as I go up in canvas size my paintings turn out very different than my small ones. But this time it didn’t, so I think I have found my ‘limit’.
Also, I got a new rug, I love it – really ties the room together 😎
The sun returning in January in Bukta on Tromsø islandPeople greeting the sunWas in Tamokdalen to help with a photo project. Beautiful crispy dayI made my first sámi silk shawl, in gorgeous yellow/goldAnd a pair of ankle wraps. Hand vowen…Kali liked them too!Got one new tattoo this year 🙂 Painting in the background made for my bffMet the cutest puppy! Look at that face…🧡Frozen raindrops outside my windowMy best friend got married in Brooklyn. Unreal and beautiful. First time in the US for me ☺Heidrun and me. Prettiest bride 🌻Me in my handmade coast kofte. What a day 💚💛❤In Central ParkTime’s squareMe being a total tourist ✌Time’s Square again. It was colourful and overwhelming 🙃🌈New York subwayKvaløya, beautiful as always Whale watching.. the sky was so pink that dayOrcasTrain ride in OsloLittle cloudKim Katami and me on retreat 🧘♀️ New Years eve 2018/2019WalesMy lovely friend and sangha sister, Elizabeth from Louisiana. We were in Birmingham Retreat girlsIce skating on this lake that made the coolest soundsKvaløyaKvaløya, cold day on the beach. Around 15°cMidnight sun 🌅 Håja mountain Gained healthy weight this year 🙌Did a giveaway on my facebook art page with this painting, got so good feedback, made me happy 🙂Made more of these small cute paintingsSpain. I got very tan 🙃💛Was two days in France. Didn’t get too explore too much because of time, money and energy, but saw this lovely garden in ToulouseAnd met Blueberry the donkey!Tromsø catethedralAutumn was very pretty, as usual 🍁Got my hair cut at a salon for the first time in 2,5 years😍Paviljongen in TromsøAutumn day in Tromsø LokeAnti racism event at the town square, as a response to recent violence against indigenous peopleMy favourite painting from this year. Inspired by the Arctic polar nightWent to quite a lot of museums and exhibitions this yearFound this cool and weird coat on flea marketWas butt naked in a commercial 😅Made an X-files painting for a friend 🛸
I have sooo many more pictures from this year, but some of them I feel are nice to keep private 😊💛
Et rundt maleri fra noen år siden. Tror det er rundt 35 i diameter. Dette bildet tok jeg før jeg malte en hvit husky sittende på stien. Syns egentlig det var bedre uten 🙃 Glemt å legge det ut før 💚💙🧡Et bittelite sommermaleri som jeg solgte i forrige uke. 9 x 6 cm 😊 Har noen maleri til salgs på SevenDesign i Tromsø🌿
“The sight filled the northern sky; the immensity of it was scarcely conceivable. As if from Heaven itself, great curtains of delicate light hung and trembled. Pale green and rose-pink, and as transparent as the most fragile fabric, and at the bottom edge a profound and fiery crimson like the fires of Hell, they swung and shimmered loosely with more grace than the most skillful dancer.” 🌌
My little late night creativity painting.. Couldn’t sleep last night so I thought why not just spend my time wisely 😄 A bit unusual colour choices for me, but I like how it turned out. Was unsure if I choose the right colour for the mountains but I can always change that later if the mood strikes me..🌈🎨
50 x 40 cm. Not completely in scale with the room in this room simulation, but wanted to show how the colours would work in a setting like that. The app is called HallFrames.One shouldn’t have to move mountains for others, but it’s possible to climb them together. Shared sorrows are half the burden, shared joy is as good as infinite. ♾🎨💙🗻☺
One of my latest paintings! It didn’t turn out how I saw it in my head, just different, but still good. I used only three colours on it; white, blue and brown. Mostly blue, as I do with 90% of my art 💙🤓 I rarely use black in mountain/rock paintings, it’s too harsh, I find it much better to use different pigments that makes it all look much more true to nature. You rarely see all black nature, unless you are in Iceland or somewhere else vulcanic😄
Also, I have two of my paintings at the Arctic Adventure center in Tromsø. They are for sale by the way 😄
My chubby penguin is spending his Christmas at Arctic Adventure center alongside some peaks and good company 👭💙🎨🐧❤ #theonlypenguininthearctic
Ask The Mountains 