Carina Söderström 

ARTIST NOTE

 

Born in Stockholm, Sweden but her heritage is Finnish. With parents that were immigrants the heart and interest in social issues led her to combine Art Science studies at Stockholm University with Art Therapy studies in St Albans, England. She also worked within this field for a long time until she was almost 50 years old. Then Carina saddled up and invested wholeheartedly in her artistry and has done so since.
Carina Söderström has been awarded with The Tellervo Tikkanen’s scholarship for the Swedish-Finnish artist of the year 2017.
Her work can be found as well in schools, preschools and homes for the elderly, Sundbyberg town hall and other public institutions as in private homes.

 

 

 

 

The silent understanding of being human. I am touched by the language of cloud formations without understanding it, experience the power of the sea or a wind without knowing how there can be anything like nature’s inherent knowledge of movement, reproduction or beauty. It is powerful and in my painting I might catch a millimeter of an inkling of what it is all about. Existence itself.
 
My painting moves in that direction, more of spirituality, depth and mystery. It is the movements of my body together with the traces of the colors on the canvas that want to express the non-material bond between nature and man, between on the one hand body and on the other hand intuition, feelings and what cannot be expressed in words”. (Carina Söderström).
 
 
 
 
 
 
1. What experiences, spaces, places, or concerns inspire you to create your work?
 
My own experience as a woman (in relation to others, to family and to society) is the source I get ideas and inspiration from mostly. Nature in all it’s forms is a well to my artistry, such as the movement of water and the feeling of how the sky meets the sea and the complete balance between perfect forms and lively lines. However, the most fundamental thing in my practice is that I try to reach the soul of what I render, in the color itself and behind the surface. I am captivated by the warm and cold shifts of colors in relation to each other and can immerse myself deeply in the infinite variety and changeability that all living things carry. The big existential questions always speak to me. What it means to be human, the essence of being. (C.S.)
 
 
 
 

2. Tell us about your artwork or series you are currently working on.

What I have been working on for some time now is a continuation of what has just been mentioned. To reach deeper into what cannot really be understood on an intellectual level but rather intuitively, perhaps back to the fundamental. A child’s total vulnerability, loneliness and the dimensions of death that possibly exist in the midst of the living are themes now. A strong female force I think I sense in the movement of nature between a first seed or drop to courageously increase in size and then wither or dissolve. The feeling is that in my own body there is the universal and I use that when I paint. I use large canvases where I ̈connect ̈ to the canvas and somehow transfer myself to the painting. (C.S.)

 

 
 

 

Carina Söderström
@carinasoderstromart
Website or portfolio: www.artworks.se and www.carinasoderstrom.wix.com/konst