Challenge accepted

I have been working on a picture lately, but never really progressed. This was an idea I´d had for long, I even made a sketch of how it would be, but once I sat down to work on it I somehow found an excuse to stop after a short while. This is totally not me, as when I am in the flow, I need to be dragged away from my needle and fabric!

But now I found myself doing other creative stuff instead (a legal excuse…?): Sewing a new skirt, making a tote bag for a friend, upcycling some old clothes for summer. Stitching on my eternity project, which is normally left for in front of the tv.

And then, of course, checking my Substack a bit more frequent then I´d normally do. There was a fabulous article by the fabulous Queen of Mandalas (otherwise also known as the Coffee Pod Lady), Carolyn Keesh: I Had a Lifetime Mandala Obsession and Didn´t Know It. Carolyn writes about how she went through her photos and discovered that she´d always had a big thing for mandalas, whether it was in creating smoothie bowls, choosing a shirt to wear or a tapestry to hang on the wall. She writes:

What if you went through your photo library like a detective, looking for patterns of shapes, colours, and themes. You too, might find something you never noticed before.

In a course I took a while ago, about finding your art style, the tutor suggested the same. Look at your photos! I did.

I have thousands of photos of light. The sky, the clouds, the sun breaking through a dark clouded sky, rays of sunshine playing with the straws of wild oat in the fields, sunrises and sunsets. I often find myself running out to take photos because the light is so amazing. Or stopping the car for the same reason.

But I was thinking, no, this is not my inspiration. I am not going to do landscapes. I want to go within.

However, Carolyn´s article made me relook and rethink. Going back to my photos I realized two things: That the project I was working on didn´t progress because it felt like I was going backwards. Making something I used to do years ago. And, that while I have done one or two light-sky-view-landscape pictures before, I struggled and felt I didn´t succeed with my vision.

Fear of failure stopped me from going into that territory again.

I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.

Said Pablo Picasso.

I decided to challenge myself and I am proud to say that I also accepted the challenge.

Here´s the photo I decided to use as inspiration. If you look carefully, you´ll see hundreds of flowering almond trees in the hill in front.

I wanted to integrate the almond trees in the picture, so I started confidently with french knots (after all, these I know!) on the of fabric piece that would go in front.

I had absolutely now idea to how I would progress with the clouds, but I started by dying bits of fabrics (linen, cotton and silk) in water with blue and black acrylic paint.

Shuffling the dyed bits of fabric, I never got the effect I visioned. Time for a new break, and, to get some inspiration:

Flickering through the book, I realized again the thing I always struggle with. Getting loose! I get hung up on tiny details and that stuff should look realistic, even if I don´t want it to look realistic.

Eventually I decided to make some clouds, without stitching them to the back ground fabric, and take it from there.

While I was quite happy with the clouds, the rest didn´t work out for me. Green sky? Why not! I was gonna go loose, after all! Or maybe the voile would look better?

In the end, I went to bed. Slept on it. And, like I quite often do, woke up with the solution in my head. Once the background for the clouds were in place, I also realized that the almond trees had to go. They made the picture too messy and simply didn´t fit with the feel of it. Well, it is not the first time I spend a day stitching something that eventually is placed in the recycle drawer.

And - voila - here is the finished result of my landscape picture, Alpujarra Sky.

And here are some details:

I am actually very pleased with it. But mostly I am pleased that I dared accepting the challenge!

And, Carolyn, thank you sooo much for your inspiration and for sharing so much joy through your posts and articles.

Alpujarra Sky is for sale in my webshop. As a subscriber you´ll get a 15 percent discount on all my artwork untill May 17th. Use the code MAY 2026.