In Quiet Light

The texts belong to the exhibition In Still Daylight at Sollidens Slott.
The texts are written by the artist herself, CajsaStina Åkerström.

THE SUN BOTTLE

The yellow vase at the centre of this painting almost becomes the sun itself, glowing with its bright colour and distinctive shape. Finnish designer Helena Tynell named it The Sun Bottle when she created it more than sixty years ago. Made of uranium glass, it seems to vibrate in shades ranging from yellow-green to pale orange. Behind it stands a dark violet vase by Swedish designer Carl Olof Bogarp. The complementary colours of the two vases create a lively tension, while the shadows across the table add a sense of quiet magic.

A sprig of mock orange placed in the rear vase rests partly in shadow, except for the flower cluster at its tip, which catches the full light. Outside the window, a large mock orange bush rises into view, while sunlight streams down through the branches of a pear tree more than two hundred years old.

SOLLIDEN – HIDDEN PATH

This painting depicts Solliden’s beautiful pergola. At first glance, it could easily be mistaken for a scene from Capri. The light falling across the pathway, paved with Öland limestone, carries a distinctly Mediterranean feeling.

Here, it becomes clear how strongly Queen Victoria was inspired by Axel Munthe’s remarkable villa San Michele when Solliden was built. The whitewashed columns lining the walkway, the classical Roman sculptures, and the large terracotta pots all echo that influence.

The name Solliden is often translated as “the sunny slope.” In the pergola, light lives and plays in endless variations – a quality that is also central to San Michele. Perhaps it is in this meeting between Öland and the Mediterranean that the soul of the scene can be found: a quiet walk through greenery where time seems to slow down and the light speaks for itself.

TANSY AND RED CLOVER

In this painting, a beautiful glass vase-jug by Monica Backström takes centre stage. While arranging the still life, I felt it needed wildflowers rather than cultivated blooms.

Red clover takes me back to childhood summers, when one of my favourite pleasures was drawing nectar from its tiny flowers. Tansy, another familiar companion from those years, adds its cheerful golden-yellow buttons to the arrangement. On the windowsill stands a small clay sculpture made by my sister Louise. In the foreground is a horse’s head in smoky Murano glass – a paperweight created by Venetian master glassmaker Licio Zanetti.

Near and far. Natural and handmade. Somehow everything exists in harmony. And in the labyrinth of memory, I can still hear the crunch of gravel beneath my feet on long summer walks in search of wild strawberries.

ALLIUM

There is something special about alliums. I have loved these floating spheres since childhood. Perhaps I inherited that love from my father, who planted them throughout the garden plots he took over from my grandmother in the late 1970s. Besides being beautiful, alliums are also said to keep voles and other garden pests away. My father particularly appreciated that practical quality.

Today I grow them in my own garden. Every May, their purple globes rise on tall stems, bringing a sense of pure visual joy.

In Erkkitapio Siiroinen’s vase Kasperi, this remarkable flower comes fully into its own. Deep within the composition, slightly right of centre on the windowsill, stands a small clay sculpture made by my sister. It is full of beauty and character. For me, it is one of the painting’s true focal points.

SEPTEMBER BLUES

There is a particular feeling when summer begins to give way to autumn. A sense of melancholy arrives. The light changes, and the shadows grow longer. It can be seen throughout this painting.

Blue is the colour of melancholy for me, and it dominates here as well. When I created this work in 2020, my beloved dog had recently passed away at the age of eleven. In many ways, it felt like the end of an era in my life. I wanted to capture that feeling.

BLUE, GREEN AND APRICOT

In this still life, I have let colour take centre stage. I found the large glass dish at a flea market and immediately fell in love with its deep blue colour. It became the starting point for the entire composition.

The complementary shades of yellow and orange appear in the fabric, the fruit, and the coloured pencils. The beautiful linen damask cloth once belonged to my grandmother and comes from a collection of household linens that I inherited from her.

On the shelf behind, you can glimpse part of my ever-growing glass collection. Beneath it lie a few rolled canvases belonging to my uncle Göran, a much-loved family member and a gifted artist. Together, these familiar objects create a small world of personal meaning within a larger world often marked by conflict and uncertainty.

SAFE HARBOUR

Kolboda Harbour, on the Kalmar Strait, is my place of refuge. It lies about ten kilometres from my home and has long been somewhere I return to for peace and perspective.

The photograph that inspired this painting was taken on a cloudless summer day in 2020, when the sky was extraordinarily clear and intensely blue. Throughout that spring and summer, I felt that the sky appeared bluer than it had for many years. The usual haze seemed to have disappeared, perhaps as a result of the dramatic reduction in air traffic during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The boat captures something of that feeling: lightness, freedom, and the promise of open horizons.

CONTEMPLATION

This painting began on a day filled with all the practical things that life contains alongside creativity. During a break from work, on my way to the kitchen to make coffee, I suddenly noticed the scene unfolding in one of the windows.

Fortunately, I had my camera nearby and was able to capture the moment: the deep, cool shadows contrasting with the intense light behind the figurine of Hygieia, the Greek goddess of health; the lush, sunlit greenery outside the window; and the small blue bowl standing on its yellow foot.

It was a beautiful example of how unexpected moments can create their own quiet magic.

THE LAST WATER

This painting is a close study of the old millrace at the former Skräpple Mill.

During the summer of 2022, the channel had almost completely dried out. Only a small pool of water remained, shrinking day by day. It seemed like a watchful eye, gazing both at the world around it and at the eternity reflected in the sky above.

BLUE VASE WITH CALENDULAS

The meeting between the golden-orange calendulas and the deep blue glass vase forms the heart of this painting.

The image is closely connected to a childhood memory. My beloved grandmother, whose life was marked by hard work and careful economy, always kept an ultramarine-blue glass vase on her dining table during the flowering season. It was filled with fresh calendulas gathered from her own garden.

There was something wonderfully simple and beautiful about it: a perfect sense of colour and form expressed through everyday flowers. For me, it remains a kind of visual happiness, preserved in memory.

THE POND

A stand of alder trees reflected in the waters of the mill pond in the pale light of late winter. Last year’s leaves and fragile buds create clouds of brown and violet among the branches overhead.

Nature waits in quiet anticipation, poised on the threshold of spring, just before the leaves begin to unfold.

INDIAN CRESS

Indian cress, more commonly known as nasturtium, is my favourite flower. I love its scent, the crisp texture of its leaves and stems, and the extraordinary range of colours in its blossoms, from deep crimson and fiery orange to the palest yellow.

There is something almost luminous about the petals, as if they contain a light of their own. The intense red flowers seen in this painting seem to glow from within, shining even against the darker background.

In English, the flower is usually called nasturtium. Over the years, people abroad have sometimes been curious about the Swedish name Indian cress. But to me, it has always sounded more beautiful and evocative, carrying a sense of mystery and imagination.

LABORATORIUM OPTICUM

The title of this work comes from the brass candlestick, designed by Marianne Gille for Reijmyre Brassworks.

What makes the piece so fascinating is the small glass sphere attached to it. When the candle is lit, the flame is magnified within the globe, and the light is refracted and scattered beautifully throughout the room. In this painting, however, the candle remains unlit, and other wonders emerge instead.

Within the sphere, the view from the window bends, twists, and turns upside down — a small demonstration of the marvels of optics.

The pears and grapes are home-grown. The elegant glass bowl holding them was designed by Signe Persson-Melin. I am especially fond of the colours of these grapes: the red stems shifting from vivid cerise and orange to deep burgundy, and the frosted surface of the dark red-blue fruit.

BLACKBERRIES IN A GREEN GRAPPONIA

As soon as I arranged this still life, I felt I had discovered an intriguing combination of colours, materials, and forms.

The lime-green plums, the amber-red tea, the blackberries, and above all the beautiful green Grapponia vase by Finnish designer Nanny Still create a rich visual dialogue. My coloured pencils and oil pastels become part of the composition, adding another layer to the scene.

The mirror in the background reflects fragments of the arrangement and extends the image beyond its frame. I spent a great deal of time refining this composition, taking hundreds of photographs before finally finding exactly the balance I was looking for.

WILD STRAWBERRIES

This painting was created on a warm day in September 2021.

Soft sunlight filtered through one of the windows in my home, carrying memories of the summer that had just passed. The season’s last yellow nasturtiums and the wild strawberries resting in a crystal bonbon dish seemed to send greetings from every summer of my life.

The books stacked nearby, their spines turned away, contained voices, thoughts, and experiences gathered from across the world, preserved on pages of different ages and textures. The small dents and irregularities of the pewter bowl echoed with memories of the blacksmith’s hammer shaping the metal long ago.

Together, these objects became a meditation on memory, time, and the traces we leave behind.

About the exhibition

For many people, CajsaStina Åkerström is best known as a singer, songwriter, and author. With her distinctive voice and thoughtful lyrics, she has been a valued part of Swedish cultural life for several decades. But creativity has always taken many forms in her life. Alongside her musical career, she has long devoted herself to drawing and painting, and since 2021 she has been exhibiting her artwork to an ever-growing audience.

In In Quiet Light, we encounter an artistic practice centred on light and its ability to transform what we see. The subjects are drawn from CajsaStina’s surroundings in the Småland countryside – her home, garden, and the natural world around her. The exhibition includes still lifes with glass and flowers, depictions of water and landscapes, and moments captured in different seasons and changing light.

CajsaStina describes her art as figurative, organic, and intuitive. She works with oil pastels and coloured pencils on watercolour paper, using neither brushes nor traditional paint-mixing techniques. Instead, she shapes her images with her fingers, fingernails, and palette knives, among other tools. This method gives the works a distinctive glow and presence, allowing colour, texture, and the play of light to take centre stage.

Many of her works are inspired by photographs she has taken herself, but the paintings then develop freely through the creative process. Her aim is not simply to reproduce a place or an object, but to capture a mood, a memory, or a fleeting moment in time.

The exhibition also features a brand-new work created especially for Solliden. The painting depicts the well-known pergola at Solliden Palace – a place where architecture, greenery, and light come together in a way that closely reflects CajsaStina’s artistic vision.

We hope this exhibition will inspire you to pause for a moment and discover the extraordinary within the familiar and everyday.