Where life take us…
Our dreams are shaped and largely determined by so many aspects of our upbringing. Additionally and quite certainly if you are born female, there is a big chance that you will be conditioned throughout your life. Most of us will grow up without realising about this conditioning, it runs so deep in our bones by the time we grow up, we can simply see it as part of “adapting” to the social structure around us.
From the stories we are told (fairy tales and traditional cautionary tales), to the images we see portrayed in art, and additionally to the roles the women in our lives take. The narratives around women are ones of conforming to standards and norms that largely limit us and our potential. I realise I was born with a rebellious soul, but my wild spirit was tamed throughout my life.
January 2024
Oslo, Norway
I was a great / model child, obedient, good student, never did anything “crazy”, achieved high education and worked traditional jobs most of my adult life. What fundamentally changed me was doing the deep work (following a mental break down, which taught me how much I had abandoned myself pursuing to be a “good” woman). Art was my salvation, it always was, it was one of the most powerful ways I had to express something that sometimes I could not find words for. I turned my life upside down in many ways while recovering from my mental health struggles and it was all for the better. I learnt and worked hard to love myself in a way that I never had, to nurture my mind, soul and body with all the things it craved. Then my rebellious and wild soul started to become more and more present in my life, I still don’t know exactly how to let it coexist in this life that I am living now, with traditional roles and settings, but one thing I do know is that I am open to let it guide me and my art.
Most recently I have found myself rejecting everything that continues to perpetuate narratives, where women are considered inferior or are made to feel invisible. I no longer feel comfortable just going to places that represent women in a derogatory way or which make a fantasy of a woman to be the standard of beauty and which affects how women see themselves.
I hope as each of you read this text you feel closer to your wild-self, to that beautiful and strong intuition we are born with and which too often is described to us as something we must learn to suppress to fit in.
It is inevitable that I feel so strongly about painting women in my art (and what a privilege it is to do so also for my commission work), history has left so many of us out and I no longer take that as a given. I am being the change that I want to see in the world, through my art, through dialogue and engagement.
