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 kids obviously, but being a parent takes it to another level I feel. 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 an anxious and worried person, so I feel I had to learn this in order to simply have a better life with more control. I also struggle with stuttering/stammering. 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.
Elsa Laula Renberg – the Swedish/South sámi activist, reindeer herder and politician who held the first gathering for sámis in Trondheim 6th of February 1917, where sámi rights and issues were discussed. This meeting became the foundation for our national day. She also founded the first ever sámi association in Stockholm.
Wanted to make a small post on this day, although we are just “celebrating” at home drinking coffee and watching a new five part documentary called “From Sápmi to Alaska”. It is about the Sámi reindeer herders who went from here in the late 1800s to help teach the natives living there about herding. Many stayed, some returned.
A very chill corona friendly celebration you could say 😊
Me in my traditional dress I made myself. Mittens are made by my partner’s mum. Pictures from last year.
Two of my favourite sámi art prints, the first one by Lena Stenberg titled “Anne Marja, what do you see?”, second one by Swiss artist Leodwen. So lovely.
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.
November birthday girl 🌟 My good friend Katharina turned 27 🌟
Painted hearts I made, perfect for both christmas tree decor and as tags on gifts🎁🎄
Colourful crisp mornings. Click to see big versions 💙
Blouse by Laš (Sámi design) ❤💙💚💛Made my day few weeks ago. Had my last ultrasound, and the midwife gave me the green light to drink coffee again, being at the end of my pregnancy. So we went to the local coffeebar Risø and they made me this amazing piece of mocca art 😁🤰☕ #allthesmallthings
“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 ☃️🥂🌌
Traditional sámi wool shawl by NativeInNorway, Nordkjosbotn, Balsfjors.
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 💙🙏🏼
Sámi 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 (sámi). 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!🙌🏻🎨🌼
Portrait by my partner with my new camera 😊45 x 55 painting, acrylic on canvas. Sold 🙂Sun symbol painted on my denim vest 🌿 Sápmi flag sewn on my bag 🌸
Did you know only around 30% of the whole sámi population speaks/write one of the sámi languages today? The longlasting banning of the languages caused identity crisis for many, but I am happy it is changing slowly 🐢 I feel proud to be part of the generation that is reviving our own culture, with not only language but art, clothing and music too 💚
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.