I just got back from an amazing, mind-blowing, life-changing, fantastically incredible vacation in Iceland!!! I have always felt a strong pull to Iceland’s isolated strangeness, and have longed to travel there for quite some time. I finally decided to take the journey, and it ended up being one of the best trips of my life!!!

I love Icelandic art, from it’s stunning visual edginess to it’s bright modernness. I adore Icelandic artists and musicians, and was inspired by so many of the classical and contemporary artists working out of Reykjavík, as well as so many other things: stellar design, colorful architecture, fresh & sustainable food, animals that weren’t the slightest bit wary of humans, beautiful Icelandic horses & of course the people of Iceland.

And I was especially influenced by the many diverse landscapes I encountered! It all felt otherworldly, like I was exploring another planet at times. From bubbling geothermic mud pots, to the blue lagoon, to farms full of frolicking goats and sheep, to glacial lakes covered in jumbo icebergs, to black lava sand beaches, to quaint fishing villages located on fjords, to steaming volcanoes, to immense lava fields & craters, to the Arctic Ocean, to vast wildernesses of bouncy moss, to the thousands of waterfalls and rainbows– and of course the midnight sun that never set.

In short, Iceland inspired me. It changed me, charmed me, and recharged me. Artistically I’ve been flooded with new ideas and have been working on a couple of new series inspired by Icelandic landscapes and my experiences. This is the first piece in my series:

Iceland, Abstracted: #1
Watercolor on Paper
2009

Also I’ve got thousands of photographs to sort through still, but will post some soon once I get though them!

Skál!
(cheers in Icelandic)