240 Houses is a watercolor and ink painting on a 22” x 30” piece of cold pressed watercolor paper depicting the Danish neighborhood, “The Potato Rows” in Copenhagen.
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København Rådhus Bryllup- Meriem og Jesse
A beautiful wedding at the København Rådhus in February.
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Master of Dreams
Some days I feel very lonely… most days I feel very loved. Oddly enough, the days I feel the loneliest it’s hard to remember the incredible amounts of love I receive most days… I guess this is the most important part about being human and learning how to be a grateful person. Recently my personal life has been one hell of a rollercoaster ride… The ups are as tall as the tallest building ever built and the lows are so low I could probably see the center of the Earth. Under extreme pressure to preform, stressing to keep my head above water, having people rely on me for help and resolve… I’m feeling the crunch and it’s like an egg in a vice.
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On The Sunny Side
So what exactly is "happiness?" I see that we talk about it a lot online, among our peer groups, with our families... even my husband and I have this conversation endlessly along with other guiding topics like "how does one define success and how does that relate to our ideas of happiness?" I thought by coming to Denmark, the chronically defined land of the "happiest people,” I too would find the happiness I craved. That feeling of self sufficiency and joy. But, it's been a year now, and I still do not feel any happier than I did in California. In fact I would say that I feel slightly more frustrated and a lot more stressed.
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Sunset over Nordhavn Station in Copenhagen, Denmark
Toget
The train is what unites a lot of us, it keeps us on the same level. We share the space with the wealthy, the poor, the elderly, the young... we are all the same when we ride the train and, for me, it’s one of the best parts about living in Denmark.
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A mural in the Nørrebro neighborhood, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Abberations
Life is a series of choices, this we know. We chose to try, we chose to be passionate or willful, we choose to be satisfied or dissatisfied... we chose many things and sometimes we can even chose when we die. We are the authors of our own stories, sometimes we are great, successful writers with lots of wonderful stories to tell. Sometimes we aren't so great and can't barely lift pen to page... but we, regardless of hope or health, are the authors. We chose when each chapter begins and when each chapter ends and we decide how they read. Some of us deny that this is factual or will throw semantics into it but, regardless of faith and regardless of denial, we write and we chose whether to write well or to just barely get the words out.
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Adolescent Anonymous
This is a project I've been working on for four years featuring my daughter. I call it "Adolescent Anonymous" and the outline for it's existence is simple: I wanted to share my daughter's daily life while also attempting to preserve her privacy and this is what I came up with. If you'd like to see more of these anonymous-type images please feel free to follow me on Instagram or search the hashtag #adolescentanonymous
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The ceiling of the Lund Domkyrka in Lund, Sweden.
Erosion
As artists we wake up every morning willing to put ourselves out there… taking the seeds of our soul and turning them into the flowers we share with the world. Not everyone likes your particular flower but someone else will see it, buy it and treasure it. The point isn’t to further career but to further ourselves… So what if not everyone likes what you make, be passionate anyway. It’s incredible how time, energy and effort can change the landscape of life.
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The blooming Rapeseed fields near Køge in Denmark taken from the train.
Running Away
How do you know when you’ve found the right place? For me I’ve always had that inner longing telling me I’m not where I am suppose to be. Even when I was a young person I’ve had a wanting to get up and go and leave the past behind me. At 6 or 7 I decided to “run away” and I made it about 5 miles from my house before I was picked up by a police officer and delivered back home to my hysterical parents… I remember feeling sad that my parents were so upset and worried but I also remember thinking to myself “ok, maybe I’ll wait until I’m a little older before I do that again.”
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The Sakura trees in bloom at Bispebjerg Cemetery, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Then There's Flowers
April is coming to a close and thus has arrived the glorious Danish spring I have heard so much about since coming here in September. The darkness that has gripped us for several months has softened its clenched fist and slowly released us into a season of delicate flowers and bright kelly green grasses… we are free from the winter, if only for a few months.
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The beautiful wooden archways of the Copenhagen Central Station in Denmark.
A Simple Tak
It’s been 7 months since we moved… Even as I type that I can’t really believe the words. That time went by so fast… Almost like I didn't really live it, it just kind of went by and now it’s April. I think about this time last year and how I felt and what I was doing and I don’t know how I got from there to here… I just kind of blinked and it went.
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Søborg
We Regret to Inform You
The very nature of rejection is generally bad… After we are rejected, no matter what kind of denial we’re thinking about here, a person feels less than ideal. Some kinds of rejection are harder to take than others, like being refused by someone you have feelings for… honestly, I think that kind is the hardest. But there’s all kinds of rejection from friendships, community and the kind of rejection I’m currently experiencing… unemployment.
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Under the Tagensvej in Nørrebro
Into The Ny
2017 was a hard year and for many reasons beyond the current events taking place back home. This year my family has known many new, good, hard, beautiful and strange situations that can only be summed up (what I feel any way) in photos. We travelled and we cried, we laughed and we grew... but we never lost faith in ourselves and our abilities to make sound but risky decisions.
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This duck was crazy good.
God Jul
I came to Denmark thinking that my life would completely change and, for the most part, it has. I know that when Aaron and I were considering such a profound move away from the place we grew up, we both agreed that change was something we needed in order to move forward in our lives. As we walked to the train from our friend’s home; friends that invited us into their lives, fed us, comforted us and have been truly welcoming, our faith in this incredibly difficult decision was affirmed.
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The sky over Søborg
Vitamin D Fortified
I grew up in the sunlight… I mean just take a look at my skin and you can tell that I've spent the majority of my life being baked by the sun. I also come from a country that adds vitamin D to everything! It's in milk, it’s in bread; vitamin D is something that I have not yet experienced a lack of… It's just there. It's always there and it doesn't really effect me when the sun goes away for a day or two normally. But coming here, being covered in clothes for so many weeks, having the sun hit me at this odd angle where it doesn't even feel like it's actually touching me, the fact that I haven't been really hot since I came in August… All these things have really started to effect me in a way that I have yet to experience.
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Hehehehe... Street art by Welin (check out his killer Insta at @welinoo)
The Little Things
It’s the little things that you really start to notice when moving to a foreign country. The small, seemingly insignificant stuff you don’t think about on a normal everyday basis. Those things start to creep into your mind, sometimes your heart, and I feel that it can make for a pretty fun list. So I made my fun list, a little Hump Day gift for you all… Feel free to add on to it in the comments if I missed something. Some advice for the future as we quickly move into the cold and dark winter everyone keeps talking about… and by “everyone”, I mean everyone.
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From our Halloween trip to Tivoli
Crazy Together
Some things I’ve found to be awesome about living in Denmark can be listed and elaborated on. The things I’m not so into about living abroad are best served for a long drawn out melancholy-sounding novel of writing and I think we’re all pretty sick of that at this point. So here are the things I love about being in the chilly north:
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From the butterfly exhibit at The Copenhagen Zoo
The Lonesome Crowded Expat
So that time of my expat life has finally arrived… The time where I realize I miss my family and friends so much it hurts a little. I mean, you miss your family and friends when you leave regardless… You walk away, get on that plane and you miss them almost immediately. Tears start to flow sometimes (they did for me) and you just miss them. But right now, what I feel…. this is a different kind of missing them. It’s that kind of missing when I realized, "this will be my first official holiday season away."
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Den Lille Havfrue and her fanbase in Copenhagen, Denmark... PS, the artist is Edvard Eriksen.
Three Pieces of Trash
Tourism is weird. I grew up in a tourist town and I always felt that way. I hated tourism as a youngster and I always wanted them to “just go home.” Then, as I got older and found myself rather dependent on tourism, I didn't want them to go home as much. Tourism is a great economic driver but it can also be hugely detrimental to a culture’s way of life depending on how your tourists act in your home town.
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The walls that cover up construction sites in Copenhagen are decorated with amazing artwork.
Immigration Circus Act
My husband and I started the actual immigration process about a year ago when we came to Scandinavia looking for the best music composition program for my husband to work on his masters degree. We visited two schools in Sweden and the school Aaron now attends here in Denmark, The Royal Danish Academy of Music. I remember the day we decided we wanted to immigrate to Europe quite fondly, actually. My daughter and I were playing at a little park together while my husband met with the head of the Music Composition program at RDAM. It was a really lovely autumn day. We had visited pretty much all the Swedish schools and, honestly, Aaron wasn't interested. We felt a little defeated by the whole thing until that fateful day in Denmark…
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