Nina Johansson

One of the larger paintings in the exhibition. This is the entrance of the Guest house, which used to be the supervisor´s estate while the saw mill was still running. The workers hardly ever got in here back then, now it´s open to anyone – some changes are for the better. Now you can grab a bite to eat or have a beer in here, and sit down and enjoy the view of the sea and the islands outside.

49,5 x 70 cm, watercolours on a full sheet of Fabriano Artistico 300 gsm rough grain watercolour paper.

One of the sheds on the island. Several houses share these sheds. In this painting I thought I´d try working with colours I don´t often use, so I let some pink and yellow go along with the black-and-white shed.

51 x 16 cm, watercolours on Fabriano Artistico 300 gsm rough grain watercolour paper.

Everything on Norrbyskär is ordered in neat rows, the streets (not that there are many…) are straight as rulers, the houses are all in line, everything in this community was planned and laid out perfectly a few years before 1900, to keep everything organized at the saw mill. If you got a job at the saw mill, you lived your life in these company houses, spent your spare time in the many music-, sports- and church clubs on the island, and you didn´t misbehave, because everybody knew everything about everybody.

This is the image I used for my vernissage invitation card.

19,5 x 20 cm, watercolours on Fabriano Artistico 300 gsm rough grain watercolour paper.

One of the houses at Långgrundet. This is also one of the old worker´s homes, a timber/wood house built after the same blueprints as the brick house shown in the painting Stugu.

Each house contained four apartments, and living on the bottom floor near the street had the highest status, while living on the second floor with the windows pointing away from the street wasn´t so hot. Ridiculous, huh? This status even shows in the tile stoves in each apartment. The stove in the lower apartment towards the street has a lot more decor than the stove towards the garden on the second floor. What can you say… humans, huh?

19,5 x 20 cm, watercolours on Fabriano Artistico 300 gsm rough grain watercolour paper.

In the old days, Norrbyskär had a church and a school, all combined in three buildings at the Southern end of the street at Långgrundet. Together they look almost like a mansion with two wings, and this would be the right (or West) wing.

21 x 19,5 cm, watercolours on Fabriano Artistico 300 gsm rough grain watercolour paper.

The same stable as in yesterday´s post, only from another angle, and with slightly more realistic colours. A few of these paintings have been posted before, for example this one, but I´m reposting them anyway since they belong to the exhibition.

19,5 x 20, watercolours on Fabriano Artistico 300 gsm rough grain watercolour paper.

A part of the stable that belongs to the old supervisor´s estate at Norrbyskär. If you think you can see a mirrored number 32 and a round symbol to the left in this image, it´s because I printed some blue paint onto the paper with an old peace of wood marked with these signs. Found the wood in a shed on the island.

19,5 x 20 cm, watercolours on Fabriano Artistic0 300 gsm rough grain watercolour paper.

The island of Norrbyskär is not this barren, but it´s fun to play with the fact that the houses are placed in exact rows. The word at the bottom is the beginning of the name Norrbyskär, but in Swedish norr means North too.

20 x 20 cm, watercolours on Fabriano Artistico 300 gsm rough grain watercolour paper.

“Spela” means play, and this small but long building, near the old supervisor´s estate at Norrbyskär, contains a game which is the early 20th century´s equivalent to bowling. The only words I can find in English for this game is “skittles” or “ninepin” – could that be right? Please let me know in the comments!

This painting is one of my own favorites, I worked with it for several days. It is rather large (see measures below), and it was an all new experience to work in this size. It took bigger paintbrushes, more planning and more work to keep the paper flat.

134,5 x 37 cm, watercolours on Fabriano Artistico 300 gsm rough grain watercolour paper.

One of the sheds on the island. For the pattern to the right, I used some kind of ventilation (?) grid that I found in a junk pile in the shed.

20 x 19,5 cm, watercolours on Fabriano Artistico 300 gsm rough grain watercolour paper.