Paintings 2024

During the painting season 2024 (May - August) I have made a lot of paintings which has been sold, given away or stored in the basement.  Some of them I will present in this blogpost and you will find them  almost chronologically.

Starting early May when the temperature at my balcony and my easel was acceptable, this repainted sunset was made. Later overpainted due to the need for a new canvas.

Then I did some experimental portraits

before coming back to my abstract style

Landscapes with no real color or more coloristic expression have been ny most preferred way of making paintings. 

Some examples:

After visiting Anna-Eva Bergmans paintings at the National Museum of Norway I did some paintings according to her style

Paintings from the nature at Sunnmøre are also part of my production:

My birthplace Ålesund has always been one of my favorite motives. So also this year:

At the end of the season these three landscape images found their way to the canvas:

together with this portrait of my wife:

Looking forward to the cold winter has ended and arrival of springtime next year I may give you some blogpost from our daily life. Watch the arneogtullen.blogpost.com and Life is Great and give us feedback.

2023 Paintings

The latest paintings in 2023 are finished. 

I feel that the quality has improved during the summer production, and the feedback from market and friends gives me  great encouragement for further development.

The first photo shows me sitting in front of my easel where I am using a rubber spatel to create the image wanted. All paintings are acrylic on canvas.

Totally I have worked out 16 paintings and here I present some of these with chosen titles.

From winter to springtime

Summer 2023

Autumn is here in August

Self portrait after playing with AI

Ice and fire. Winter is coming.

Explosion

Stormy weather.

Black night 
 

A year with challenges - a new year to come

 My last blogpost was from January 2022, and now the calendar says January 17th 2023

On February 24th last year our lives became totally changed. When Putins armed forces assaulted the neighbor country Ukraine, and continued to terrorize the Ukrainian nation and their common people throughout the months to come, we all understood that Europe would never be the same.

I will not try to analyze why and what could be behind such a cowardly action, and not even how there are ways to go further, but support the Ukrainian people in their heroic fight against a superpower that not are a superpower after all. The knowledge  and skills from Kreml to the battlefield can absolute be questioned but their competence is ZERO because their attitude are as bad as hell.

Hopefully we all will survive and common sense will prevail.  

Putin: STOPP the war.

January 2022 Omicron and Squamous cell carcinoma

 January in Norway is always cross country skiing and an image of my wife ready for a Sunday tour free from the covid Omicron challenges.

However, if not COVID Delta or Omicron, other medical challenges occur. 

For the blogger himself the results of many years sun exposure; Skin Cancer, is a bad result. This time it is Squamous cell carcinoma that have to be removed from the bold head.

Hopefully the surgery will develop well and we will be cleared for  our long stay in Andalucia this spring too.

Waiting for the flight decisions a visit to Bærum Verk, in addition to candy and art, we can present two nice photos from this environment.

Andalusia 2021

 After 18 months in the shadow of COVID19 in Norway we are home. Love to be back in Andalucía and seeing our Spanish friends. The masqurillas are used at oficial places busses taxis shops hotel lobbies and when moving around in crowded areas. The Spanish peoples are very disciplined and Andalucía is a green area with many fully vaccinated persons.

The summer will not end at Costa del Sol and temperatures are between 14 and 25 every day so far in October

Blogging in 2021

 Almost 6 months have past since my last blogpost. Now blogging friends start to ask if something is or has been wrong, and Yes so it is. The social shut-down of Oslo has resulted in a lifestyle that there is no reason to tell you about.

However, Wednesday May 26 2021, Oslo´s social life opened again and Tullen and I could once more take part in the urban lifestyle we have been longing for during the last 7th months

Therefore as a start of describing the year 2021 so far, we share our traditional New Year Photo posing in our sitting room well customized to the dress code for the beginning of 2021.

In January we were not allowed to have visitors in our apartment. Daughter and grandchild had to sit in the hallway with face masks when giving us a short visit-talk. Luckily we ( family in Norway) have all been through this COVID-19 pandemic without any infections. The challenges for our family in UK, has also ended in positive health status.

The winter in Oslo this year has been "light" with low snow volumes down town, but in March heavy snow fell during a night giving this view from our balcony

During Easter I made my first stroll down to Oslo´s Main Street, Karl Johan after 6 months "detained" in our apartment. As seen the street was almost empty with shops, restaurants and hotels all closed.

Our regular restaurant "Tekehtopa" has also been closed so we could not relax under the spring blossom trees as we normally do during this season.

Then it is time for the Pfizer vaccine x 2 and as protected we could be fit for another life. First we could hug our family members and step by step socializing with people we have missed for a lang time.

Norway´s Constitution Day (17.mai) is a milestone during spring in our country and posing with national costumes or school band uniforms are a requirement.

Then, when June arrived together with high sommer temperatures, we got the real opening of our city. We could now relax in front of the parliament building in the sidewalk cafe at Grand Hotel and start to plan for the return to Spain later this year. (if the pandemic has come to an end both here and there)

2020 (Los tiempos del Corona) is coming to an end.

When the very unexpected  year 2020 is approaching  the end, we want to give you all a summery of what we have been experiencing  through the time of Corona (Los tiempos del Corona)

When celebrating the 2019/2020 New year in Milan, Italy we had no idea of what was ahead of us in the coming months, and no information that just the northern part of Italy would be the epicenter of the great pandemic of the Sars-Cov-2 virus.

Therefore, and as usual, we left for Spain and Costa del Sol in February to feel the Spring coming in Andalusia, Malaga and Fuengirola. After only three weeks we experienced the change through the News and the worries from our family in UK and Norway.

One of the requirements or recommendations was the repeatedly use of antibac gel. Sitting in restaurants we were "washing" hands often and allways before touching every new glass of wine

The real understanding of the new situation at Costa del Sol came when the restaurants closed and the police closed the beaches. 

The news from Norway and other countries all over the world was more and more scaring. Norway got total lockdown on March 12, and we decided to return home as soon as a flight could help us although the situation in southern Spain at that time was even better than in Norway.

The focus in Norway was on the capacity in the health organization with 216 in hospitals (April 11.) and from the Spanish status only counted 4 cases in Fuengirola (April 18.) 

A few weeks later the infection exploded, and Spain became one of the worst countries in Europe. 

At the end of this year Spain has almost 2 mill cases, over 50K deaths.

Back in Oslo March 16. we started our 14 days quarantine/isolation with help from family to get food and necessities. In the beginning of April we for the first time took a trip in our car to the streets of Oslo and could see the total lockdown by ourselves 

In May and during that fase of the pandemic we tried to live as normal as possible taking all the government regulations into consideration. The beauty of springtime in Oslo is normally discovered by us and thousands of tourists . Now we were almost alone together with the flowers.

On May 17. (our Constitution Day) the children parade up Karl Johan was cancelled, and when the children could not go the the royal castle as normal, the King and Queen came to us in their open limousine 

Although the seriousness we could experience the beauty of Oslo through out the summer with declining figures of infected hospitalized and deaths

The authorities recommended to spend the holidays in Norway this year and we decided to visit cities and places in short distance from our home. The first visit "outside Oslo" went to to Kistefoss Museet and all the spectacular art we could experience 

As seen on the following images the temperature during the summer months was nice in 2020 when we were recommended to stay outside with distance to others.

Halden above and Fredrikstad below gave us new and updated information of these two cities south east of Oslo. Waiting for next summer we recommend all of you to copy our trips.

Moving north Eidsvoll and Hamar got our visits. Eidsvollbygningen where our Constitution was signed in 1814 and the ruins of an old cathedral at Hamar was our first visits to these venues 

Åsgårdstrand southwest from Oslo together with Tønsberg and the old Viking area along the coastline at Vestfold is a place we have visited before including a visit at the painter Munch´s house.

Oscarsborg in the Oslo fjord with memories from April 9th 1940 was also on the agenda.

Queen Sonja´s personal art stall at the royal garden and the new project by Vebjørn Sand above Frognerseteren on the top of Oslo; The rose Garden, also accepted our visit.

In the following images we remember the city:

Moss

Kongsvinger

Hvitsten

When the summer was over and the infection figures started two increase, we limited our visits to other areas. And when the restaurants also had to close, our life more and more became limited to staying at our own apartment 

A new car also found its place in the basement this autumn. The plug in Toyota RAV4 PHEV has resulted in only 3km petrol drive over 2 months. Environment friendly you may say.

As a scorpion my birthday mid November was fully celebrated although this year we were only Tullen and I. The Spanish Cava from Juve y Champs, our favorite.

Then Christmas entered into our home. This year celebrated only the pair of us, but with digital communication through Face Time during unpacking of the gifts.

You understand while going through all these 2020 events, that we all in our family have taken the pandemic seriously.  However, for our family members living in UK the pandemic has hit a bit harder. Happily the strike has been relatively mild and the recovery is going well for all five.

Nyttårsbilde 2020/2021

With all these memories in the time of Corona we wish all our blogging friends a different, healthy and

  HAPPY NEW YEAR