Jenny Carlsson Grip visits the forest every day, sometimes just to walk, observe, listen and be inspired, or sometimes to spend a longer time painting beneath a canopy of trees. All her paintings are rooted in the forest, and its presence is palpable in her art: it is easy to imagine how the tree trunks might feel against one’s skin or how the soft springiness of the soil might feel underfoot. Nature’s presence is simultaneously dirty, fragile and beautiful in her paintings. The trees, earth and sky exist in their own cyclic reality, with one season following another. Memories linger in the layers of soil, the windswept treetops, and the annual growth rings inside each tree trunk. The same memories are also imprinted upon Carlsson Grip’s canvases.
Carlsson Grip’s style of painting veers between brutal and romantic. The rawness of her technique is heightened by her intensely physical method: she applies the paint by taking turns with a brush, her hands or rags. Her color scale echoes the earthy tones of the soil, trees, water and sky. Her paintings might equally be described as hyper-realistic close-ups of soil, moss, and branches or as expressionistic studies of color. The result hovers somewhere in a borderland between nature’s wild world and the painting’s civilized domain.
Carlsson Grip (b. 1984) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts at Umeå University and she has exhibited at venues including Bonniers Kunsthalle and Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde in Stockholm, Karlskrona Kunsthalle and Malmö Kunsthalle. Her work is found in major Nordic art collections, including those of Aalto University, Västerbotten Museum, and Blekinge Museum. The artist lives and works in Kallinge, Sweden.
