More about that below. We've been back for a week and are repacking today to head to St. Simon's Island, Georgia, tomorrow for the American Impressionist Society's 8th Annual Small Works Showcase. The show will be held at Anderson Fine Art Gallery there. If you're in the area, please be sure to come by! Opening reception is Friday, April 26th, from 4 to 7pm. You can see this incredible exhibition online HERE. Our gallery will be closed from April 22nd through May 1st and will reopen for regular hours on Thursday, May 2nd.
If you or someone you know has ever wanted to explore your creative side, make this the year to do so! It's not too late to register for my 3 Day Plein Air Workshop in Mullen, Nebraska, May 14-16th! This is in conjunction with the Mullen Art Center's "Paint the Sandhills" Plein Air event - you can come and paint even if you don't take the workshop. You just need to register in advance. Additional upcoming workshops: 3 Day Plein Air Workshop, Omaha NE, August 23-25th, and 3 Day Studio Landscape Painting Workshop at my studio, October 18-20th.
By popular demand...for the first time, I'm offering two 4 DAY ART CAMPS FOR KIDS in June! June 17-20 will be for ages 6-8 and June 24-27 will be for ages 9-12. Classes will be from 9am to 10:30am at my studio. All supplies are included!! These are filling up so register soon if you're interested! I'll be teaching drawing and painting in both sessions.
My 2 Day Beginner Oil Painting Workshop on Feb. 24th and 25th was a success and I have a few more people interested in taking another one. If you missed the last one and are interested, please contact me and if we have enough people, I'll schedule a second one!
We are also holding monthly Open Studio Portrait Sessions on Monday nights - just $15 with model provided. Click HERE for the full schedule and more information. Email me at debra@debrajoygroesser.com for a registration form and payment info or you can print the form off and pay directly on my website. Gift certificates are available for classes too!
And now...come along as we share some of our favorite art and scenery from our trip to Europe. We hope you enjoy it!
As always, thank you for your support...we appreciate you!
Don and I have had a Tulips and Windmills River Cruise on our bucket list for many years - in fact, for Don, at least 33 years. After the last few years of health challenges for us, we decided, now that our health is good again, that it's time to stop waiting for "someday" to check off these bucket list items. Grab a cup of coffee, tea or a glass of your favorite beverage...hope you enjoy this little mini-tour!
We booked a 10 day "Tulips and Windmills" river cruise with Uniworld. The itinerary took us all through the Netherlands and Belgium, starting in Amsterdam and ending in Antwerp, Belgium. We currently have two grandsons in Europe, one studying for a year in Copenhagen, and the other (his brother!) living in Leuven (near Brussels) and working in Antwerp (so he was able to pick us up at the end of our cruise...didn't know that when we booked it!). We decided to visit Copenhagen and grandson Justin there before the cruise, and then stay in Leuven, Belgium, for a few days to visit grandson Jake after the cruise. From there we took the Eurostar high speed train from Brussels to London, then to Kent in England to visit my family there. A total of 7 countries (including flight connections) in 24 days...a dream come true, filled with art, history, gorgeous scenery, inspiration for many future paintings and, of course, precious time with family.
Copenhagen was such a beautiful city. Grandson Justin gave us a wonderful tour with included a train trip to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 35km north of Copenhagen. In addition to an incredible collection of Alberto Giacometti and Louise Bourgeois sculptures, an exhibition of mixed media paintings by Firelei Baez, my favorite exhibition was an installation by South African artist William Kentridge. "The Refusal of Time" was mesmerizing! Here's a still shot at the beginning of the performance. It combines film, animation, music and graphics. As the museum website states, "As a spectator, you are entirely absorbed in the immense, pulsating visual drama." Absolutely true!
Next stop was Amsterdam, Netherlands. We arrived the night before boarding our cruise and took a lovely nighttime canal cruise. The city is so beautiful at night! Bikes are the main mode of transportation in the city...you have to be very careful crossing streets due to the bikes more than the traffic!
Our river cruise included many shore excursions and tours, sometimes two and three every day. Lots of walking...in fact Don and I each walked a total of 118 miles for the entire trip...averaged just over 5 miles/day! So grateful my new knees worked so well! We toured the Ann Frank house and museum...it was a lot to take in. It was extremely emotional to stand in the rooms where she and her family hid during the war and where they were ultimately discovered. Just no words for the atrocities...
We attended a beautiful show called "Fabriques des Lumieres" which featured the artwork of the Dutch Masters from Vermeer to Van Gogh. We saw a similar Van Gogh show here in Omaha a couple of years ago...just stunning! Here are a couple of photos from the show...it was a visual feast!
The next day, we had a tour of Haarlem, the famous Keukenhof Gardens and a tulip farm. The daffodils, hyacinths and crocus were spectacular and the early varieties of tulips were in bloom as well. Absolutely gorgeous, despite it raining most of the day!
Next up was a tour of Enkhuizen and the Zuiderzee Outdoor Museum, a recreation of a 19th century Dutch Village. SO picturesque! I loved the wooly sheep. Watch for some paintings to come from this beautiful place...it was so inspiring! We also did a walking tour of the town of Hoorn and learned about it's seafaring past.
Next stop was Nijmegen and a bus ride to visit to the Kroller-Muller Museum, which houses the 2nd largest private collection of Van Goghs in the world. There was a large group of very early works from when Van Gogh was first learning to paint...incredible! There were also several pieces I'd never seen before. Others in the museum collection include Paul Signac, Camille Pisarro (one of my favorite French Impressionists!), Renoir, Fantin-Latour, Isaac Israels, Paul Gaugin, Juan Gris, Picasso, and a large collection of sculptures, from Boccioni to Henry Moore to Rodin. If you ever have a chance to visit, I highly recommend it! Here are a few of my favorites:
The next stop on our cruise was Rotterdam. We did two tours here - first to Kinderdijk to the Unesco World Heritage site featuring the iconic windmills. It was fascinating to see how the windmills work inside and out!
From Kinderdijk, we visited the town of Delft, home of the Delft pottery factory. We took a tour of the factory, learning about how the pottery is made and even watching one of their artists hand painting a piece! There was also a wonderful display of Picasso's pottery, from plates to tea pots. Delft was also the birthplace of Johannes Vermeer, the Dutch master probably best known for "The Girl with the Pearl Earring." Vermeer is buried in the church here. There is a paint store which still has jars of pigments in the window, which they claimed was where Vermeer purchased his pigments.
We spent a day in the quaint Zeeland village of Veere, a charming harbor village, and the next day in Bruges, Belgium, where it poured rain all day unfortunately! It was still beautiful. We took a canal cruise (in the rain!) and tried out the local food and, of course, chocolates! From Bruges, we ventured on to beautiful city of Antwerp where we spent one day on a walking tour, visiting the train station (an architectural masterpiece!), sampling Belgian beer, waffles, more chocolate and fries (which they serve with mayonnaise...that took some getting used to!). The following day we disembarked from the cruise and were able to spend an additional day in Antwerp. First place we visited was the Cathedral of Our Lady, which is filled with incredible artwork, including these two original Peter Paul Rubens altarpieces.
We spent the afternoon in the KMSKA, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, in Antwerp. Wow! We were absolutely blown away. Antwerp is the birthplace and lifelong home of Peter Paul Rubens, so they have a huge collection of Rubens' work. One of the most fascinating things we witnessed was a team of women working on restoration of one of Rubens' large paintings. They were set up right there in the museum! Here are some photos...they were removing old varnish and revarnishing the painting. The dull area is where they haven't done any work yet. It will take a full two years to complete this project. Fascinating to watch! There was so much incredible artwork in this museum...I could include literally dozens more photos here but this is already getting a bit long! You can read more about this wonderful museum and their collection HERE.
From Antwerp, we met up with our grandson and spent a few days with him in Leuven, Belgium, where he lives. Such a beautiful city! Their city hall is so ornate. Don, who is still mayor of our town of Ralston, posed on the front steps, just for fun! We had the best Belgian waffle at a little stand on the street, bought more chocolates, had more incredible food and toured the Stella Artois brewery. There is another ornate church across from city hall which houses more beautiful artwork. The Museum Leuven is a must see as well!
From Leuven, we traveled by high speed train to London for one night, then on to visit my mother's side of the family in Kent, where I was born. We rode the London Eye - gorgeous views! It moves very slowly, so despite my deathly fear of heights, it was fun. We stayed across the river from Big Ben. We walked past Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, went to the Evensong service at Westminster Abbey (I was in tears...you cannot imagine how beautiful the music was, and the inside of the Abbey!), walked to Buckingham Palace arriving in time to see the changing of the guard, then back to our hotel through St. James Park. We packed a lot into one day!
Here are a couple of photos from the cliffs of Kent, between Broadstairs and Margate. It was wonderful to be back in my birthplace and to be with my aunt, uncle and cousins. It's been at least 15 years since we've seen them all. As you can see, these cliffs and the sea are beautiful and are the reason I love painting seascapes. It's been in my DNA since birth. You can be sure you'll see some new paintings from this area soon!
I hope you've enjoyed our little travelogue and found it inspiring! It was an amazing trip and we are grateful to have had the opportunity to check off another bucket list item. Thank you for following along!
"The Promise" Wins Award!
It was a tremendous honor to win an honorable mention award for Plein Air Landscape in the February Plein Air Salon. The competition had over 1,100 paintings entered from all over the world!
My winning painting, The Promise, has a very special meaning to me and is in our family's personal collection. It was painted in 2012 the day after my father's passing. To read the blog I wrote about it, click on the image.
