Christine Ödlund
by Maria Molin
The art of Christine Ödlund is like a tree whose roots and branches reach through different fields weaving together music, animation, drawing, sculpting and painting. She grows plants that a pigment producer in Belgium turn into pigments she can use in her paintings together with her watercolour paints. She finds the fact that some of the pigments might change colour or properties adds extra charm to the unpredictable nature of watercolour. She has been drawn towards nature since childhood and the fascination grew stronger when she visited the jungles of Costa Rica in her twenties. On this journey she also decided to become an artist. She attended the Arts and Crafts School in Sweden (photography and video art) plus studied composition af the Electronic Music Studio to be able to incorporate music in her artwork. Sometimes she composes music while painting and she always listens to the rhythm of her paintings. Many of her works are based on research of the communication of plants. Her upcoming exhibition at the Nordic Watercolour Museum (13.10.24-2.2.25) will contain paintings, sculptures and installations with the themes growth, processes in nature and being in contact with the non-human intelligence in our surroundings,
Hanna Saarikoski
by Sofia Simelius
In Hanna Saarikoskis watercolour works one often finds mysterious people and other creatures inviting to reflect on humanity and nature. She considered herself more of a concept artist occasionally making use of oil paint than a painter but when attending art school she had a child and this forced her to change her way of work. She could bring our her watercolours whenever she had spare time, mostly at night. Her teachers encouraged her to continue watercolour painting and she found that this medium actually suited her way of working: she has to work fairly quickly and stay focused during the process partly relying on intuition. In her own opinion some of her best works were created without any initial planning but just evolved during the process. When painting or otherwise creating art Hanna Saarikoski strives to constantly renew her expression. Some works may have been painted in many variations and in many sizes before it is complete. Behind every succesful work lies a number of experiments.
Julie Nord
by Marianne Gross
The transition from child to teenager is one of the transformations that Julie Nord depicts in her art where one of the recurring figures is the young teenage girl. Julie Nord draws inspiration from films, book illustrations and fairy tales such as “Alice in Wonderland”. Many of her works are frozen in time – in a limbo on the brink of a scary, unknown future. She learned a lot at the Art Academy in Copenhagen where she was educated, but not much about drawing or painting, but it was her great passion anyway. In the beginning she would only use black-and-white, but later on she taught herself to use watercolour. She likes the transparency of the medium and the fact that the paper base always shines through. Each work takes many weeks to complete and correcting mistakes when using ink or watercolour paint can be really difficult, but she accepts that minor flaws add to the handmade feeling of the works. Recently she has started to paint on Japanese bamboo paper which she cuts up and sews together in large pieces as collages. In her subject matters as well as with the materials, Julie Nord always tries to experiment and to push the boundaries.
Guðmundur Ármann Sigurjónsson
by Anna Sörenson Rydh
Around the year 2000 Guðmundur Ármann Sigurjónsson met a group of Nordic watercolour painters whom he went plein-air painting with every summer for 7-8 years in one of the Nordic countries. This was when he really learned how to make use of the watercolour medium and today he is the representative for Iceland on the board of the Nordic Watercolour Society. Now the group has more or less dispersed but he still goes outdoors painting with a friend from time to time. He was trained as a printer before entering the art school in Reykjavik and later on studying at the Valand Art School in Gothenburg, Sweden. In the early 90s he and his wife purchased a group of houses in Akureyri with some friends and colleagues and founded an art centre with an art school, a museum of modern art, a cultural association, an artist residence and a venue for music shows and theatres, quite an ambituous project. Some of the companies have been replaced, others are still here. He still lives and works here. Apart from some contemporary, mostly Swedish, artists Guðmundur Ármann Sigurjónsson is inspired by the renowned Icelandic painter Kjarval who died in 1972.