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Tag Archives: Danube

Passau II

19 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by emilypageart in art, culture, painting, Uncategorized

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art, artist, Danube, Emily Page, Emily Page Art, Europe, Germany, paint, painter, painting, Passau, Raleigh artist, row houses, town square, watercolor

Okay, last one of the new watercolor paintings from my trip down the Danube last summer. This one is the view of Passau from the river. A charming city!

Passau watercolor 3.jpg

Prints available here.

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Budapest In the Day

15 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by emilypageart in painting, Uncategorized

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Budapest, Budapest castle, Budapest cathedral, city lights, Danube, Emily Page, Emily Page Art, Raleigh artist, river, river at night, St. Matthias Cathedral, Viking River Cruise, watercolor

After doing 2 paintings of Budapest at Night, I thought I’d like to take a stab at painting from some pics of Budapest during the day. On the Buda side is the St. Matthias Cathedral, which has a wonderful courtyard of sorts. This is a painting of the steps leading to that courtyard.

Budapest watercolor 2.jpg

Prints available here.

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Budapest at Night 2.0

14 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by emilypageart in art, culture, painting, Uncategorized

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Budapest, Budapest at night, Budapest castle, city lights, Danube, Emily Page, Emily Page Art, Raleigh artist, river, river at night, Viking River Cruise, watercolor

Apparently, I wasn’t done with creating watercolor paintings from my trip down the Danube last summer. I just keep going and going! I’m like the Energizer Bunny of Danube paintings. While I liked the first painting I did of Budapest at night, I decided to rework it. Here’s the result.

Budapest watercolor 3.jpg

Prints are available here.

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Nuremberg

03 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by emilypageart in painting, Uncategorized

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art, artist, cityscape, Danube, Emily Page, Emily Page Art, european castle, european streets, Germany, Nuremberg, paint, painter, painting, Raleigh artist, street scene, travel, Viking River Cruise

This is another watercolor study from my trip down the Danube last summer. Our first stop was Nuremberg, where we hiked up a steep hill to a castle, and then were able to look out over the city.  What a perfect introduction to Germany!

nuremberg-watercolor-2

Nuremberg Views 6″ x 8″ watercolor and pen on paper

Prints available here.

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Regensburg

01 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by emilypageart in art, culture, painting, Uncategorized

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art, artist, Danube, Emily Page Art, Europe, european cityscape, Germany, paint, painter, painting, Raleigh artist, Regensburg, street scene, Viking River Cruise, watercolor

Here’s another watercolor study based off of a photo from my trip down the Danube last summer. This one is from Regensburg, Germany – my favorite stop on the trip.

Regensburg watercolor 2.jpg

Prints available here.

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Gottweig Abbey

30 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by emilypageart in art, painting, Uncategorized

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abbey, art, artist, Austria, castle, Danube, Emily Page, Emily Page Art, Europe, Gottweig Abbey, Krems, Raleigh artist, Viking River Cruise

As I mentioned yesterday, I pulled out the watercolors and sketched out a few new paintings based on photos from my trip down the Danube last summer. This is from Gottweig Abbey in Krems, Austria:

Krems, Austria - Gottweig Abbey watercolor.jpg

Gottweig Abbey 8″ x 6″ watercolor and pen on paper

Prints available here.

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Budapest at Night

29 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by emilypageart in art, culture, painting, Uncategorized

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Budapest, Budapest at night, Budapest castle, city lights, Danube, Emily Page, Emily Page Art, Raleigh artist, river, river at night, Viking River Cruise, watercolor

Over the holidays, my mom and I were chatting about our trip last summer down the Danube, and we couldn’t remember the name of one of the towns we’d visited. When I got home, I looked it up, and realized that there were several photos I’d taken with the intent of turning them into paintings. So, instead of doing more important work today, I sat down and broke out the watercolors to play a little more. I’ll post the sketches over the next couple of days.

At night, Budapest lights up the city and it’s gorgeous. Gor-geous. It was our last night of the trip, and we road up and down the Danube on the riverboat, taking picture after picture and wishing we didn’t have to go home the next day.

Budapest - night watercolor.jpg

Budapest 6″ x 8″ watercolor on paper

Prints available here.

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Why Are American Doorknobs So Boring?

07 Wednesday Sep 2016

Posted by emilypageart in art, culture, Uncategorized

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Tags

Danube, doorknob, doors, European door, travel

Remember how I said I was done posting about my trip down the Danube? Well, apparently, I’m a jerkface who lies. I forgot about this post. On the trip, I started getting obsessed with doors, doorknobs, and locks. I took almost 100 photos of just doorknobs. Seriously. We’d be on a tour and I’d be cutting off my fellow travelers, cars, bicyclists, horse drawn carriages, furry woodland creatures – all to cross the street to snap a shot of a cool doorknob. I have no idea why. They were just…neat. I’m going to spare you a massive photo dump of the shots I took, and just do a tiny photo dump instead. I’m sorry and you’re welcome.

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Last Danube Stuff, I Swear, Sort Of

18 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by emilypageart in blog, culture, humor, Uncategorized

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airport, airport security, Amsterdam, birds, Danube, Detroit, Kandinsky, Passau, patterns, travel, water ripples

I think this will be the last post I make about my trip down the Danube, but you never know. I’m at least not planning anymore. These are just random observations I made that don’t fit neatly into posts of their own:

  • In the Raleigh airport, which is a reasonably clean space, there were two little birds hanging out at our gate. So many questions: How did they get in? Are the crumbs they pick up off of the ground appropriate food for them? Are there worms somewhere inside that we can’t see? Why isn’t there bird poop everywhere? How do they make nests if there isn’t any plant life to swipe? If there aren’t other couples around, are their babies going to mate with each other? If that keeps happening, will they turn into mutants that take over the world?
  • When  we were flying into Amsterdam at night, there were low clouds hanging over the water, and it looked forshortened or compressed, like they were on the same level as the boats floating along. It looked like something out of The Life of Pi – pure magic. Boats floating through clouds.
  • Watching the water, from the boat while we were docked, it reminded me of Kandinsky circles. Rings within rings within rings. I wonder if that was ever something he noticed or in some way subconsciously influenced him?
  • Also watching the water, I noticed these really cool ripples, and then looked at the chair I was sitting in and saw the same pattern repeated. Intentional?

water ripples

chair ripples

  • In an art gallery in Passau, there was a sign that said, “If you plan to haggle, please give us advanced notice so that we have time to raise our prices.” I NEED that sign.
  • Do the workers at the Amsterdam airport who don’t use deodorant not smell themselves?! Because I sure as shit smelled them.
  • Why was I pulled aside at EVERY SINGLE SCREENING POINT for extra special uber screening?!
  • When we got to Detroit from Amsterdam, they made us uncheck and then recheck our baggage, and go through security a couple more times. They said, “The water you got on the last airplane can’t go through because it’s over the 3.4 fluid ounces, so throw it out.” Two things about this: if you know that it came from the last flight, and that we haven’t been able to leave the airport since getting off the plane, why can’t we take it through to the next plane? And if it is a bottle full of BOOM, how does dropping it in the trashcan next to the line help? It can blow up just as many people there as it can on the plane. Anyway, the Detroit airport is its own special brand of hell. Avoid it at all costs. This is me once we finally got through the 18 fresh rounds of security:

Cranky me in Detroit

 

 

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Kindness Visits the Danube

16 Tuesday Aug 2016

Posted by emilypageart in culture, death, dementia, gratitude, kindness, Uncategorized

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Danube, gratitude, kindness, pennies, pennies for Nick, random act of kindness, tender mercies

So, I want to talk about two acts of kindness I experienced on my trip down the Danube with my mom. But first, I want to share the way that we brought my dad along on the trip with us. As you know if you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, I associate pennies that are heads side up with my dad (complete explanations here here here and here), so we decided to leave pennies around the cities we visited to spread cheer and luck and “make someone verrrrry happy!” #penniesforNick

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But as I mentioned at the start of the blog, I wanted to talk about two acts of kindness, one that was given to me, and one that we were able to perform. The first night on the boat, we settled in for 50’s and 60’s rock night in the lounge with the boat’s piano player. The first tune, while not all that meaningful to me, induced half of the audience to get up and use the dance floor. And again, if you’ve been reading this blog for the last couple years, you know that one of the things I miss most is dancing with my dad. So I teared up watching everyone. I took deep breaths, drank some water, and tried to let it go, singing along to all the songs (based on my knowledge of 50’s and 60’s lyrics, I’m actually about the same age as the majority of the passengers – who knew?). Then the piano player started “When I’m 64,” which choked me up again, because I remembered when my dad played his favorite version of it (Connie Evingson’s) and we were at the beginning of trying to find out what was wrong with him, and he had just turned 65 so the song had taken on a new meaning. But again, I fought through and got Mom to get up and dance with me to it. I was determined not to let it get the best of me. The piano player was equally determined to reduce me to a puddle bourbon-y ooze, though. He played “Yesterday,” which I had performed my first year of college for a showcase with some friends, one of whom was killed by a drunk driver the following year. But still, I held it together. Mostly. But then, oh then, he went into “See Ya Later Alligator.” Are you freaking kidding me?! It’s not like it’s that common a song that I should have expected it. I was undone by it. I ran out to the deck and hid on the stairs and sobbed. Mom came out after a minute or so to check on me and helped me breathe. Until, we heard the music inside turn to “Unforgettable,” you know, the song Natalie Cole sang with her dead father from the first jazz CD my dad ever gave me? I mean really. There was no hope at that point, so we retired to our room.

The next morning, one of the other passengers, who looked like Cameron Diaz by the way, set a notebook that said “Happy Thoughts” on the cover next to me at breakfast, gave me a quick hug, and walked off to eat. Inside, she had written a note about losses she had suffered over the years (including 3 brothers and a husband, and she was only 50) and how she looked for life’s “tender mercies,” seeking out the good that’s still in the world and recording it in a journal like the one she was giving me. Little did she know, I do the same thing. Kindred spirits. When I went out to tour the next day, I found a new blank journal and gave it to her so she wouldn’t be without one on the trip.

So that was the first act of kindness we experienced.

The second one we were able to do for someone else. At several meals, we sat with two women who were really friendly and with whom we had a fair amount in common. On the second to last night, one of them divulged to my mom that she had brought her partner’s ashes with her to scatter somewhere, but hadn’t figured out how and when to do it, and she was running out of time. Mom and I had a small balcony off of our room, so we offered it to her to use. It had rained all evening, but the rain had stopped. It was cool out and there were lightning flashes in the distance, and we were cruising down the Danube past sleepy little villages. So we vacated the room and let her take the time she needed. She seemed relieved when she emerged. I think worrying about how to do it had been weighing on her. But she was able to let that piece of her partner go and know she had fulfilled a promise. And I was grateful to her for trusting us to be, in a tiny way, a part of her journey forward on her own.

I love the phrase “life’s tender mercies” that my shipmate used in her note to me. I love those unexpected kindnesses that can pop up half way around the world. I love that being kind to a stranger is still something worth doing and something that makes you feel good, too. In all the sadness of the past year, I’m grateful that love springs forward from the most unlikely of places. And so we continue on on our own journeys, looking for the light and the lucky pennies.

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Emily Page

Emily Page

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