“Mantle”
“Well, I think I´m going to say an obvious thing, but nature is so rich that is impossible not to be inspired,” says Allesia Brusco, aka Skogens Rymd. Her painterly title means “the space of the forest” in Swedish, telling of the world that she captures on the canvas. The artist has made a name for herself by creating images inspired by natural phenomena that hold the spirit of ancient myths. Each painting is a Nordic landscape. The ebb, flow, and creshendo of an epic tale is found in the depth and lights of colors, the movement of celestial bodies, and the steadfast presence of a dense forest.
The classical landscape is a benign image, some may even call the genre boring. Few artists have presented the landscape, an image that appreciates forms in nature, with a sense of awe that is on the cusp of otherworldly. (Thomas Uttech is another artist who successfully put his own spin on the genre). Skogens Rymd became an internet sensation because she presents nature as she sees it interacting with her wealths of knowledge in various subjects.
Bringing new life into the landscape, the paintings gained popularity over social media culminating in Brusco’s current show at Gallery Marcus in Ystad, Skåne, Sweden (https://www.instagram.com/gallerymarcus/)
While she finds inspiration in the sky in Southern Sweden, the artist is originally from Northern Italy. She was always an avid reader, managing to “devour” a book in a manner of hours. Reading Tolkien spurred an interest in ancient and medivel studies, in which she has holds a degree. “I´ve read a lot of medieval literature from many countries, mostly Italy, England, France, Spain and Scandinavia. I really like novels from Nordic writers,” her favorites being among Sigrid Undset, Knut Hamsun, Selma Lagerlöf, Arto Paasilinna, Jón Kalman Stefanssón, Fridtjof Nansen, and Mikael Niemi. Philosophy, anthropology, and archeology are also of interest to Brusco. All of her studies feed her artistry. “Sometimes I add a quote, under the title of my paintings, coming from a book that gave me something I wanted to transform in an image.”
“Inner Space”
Sweden is her creative home, in a sense. “I´ve always been fascinated by this culture and I felt at once home here and inspired by everything I paint. The sky is so clear here in the countryside that I started to look at the stars more often. Obviously not only the culture I got from books, but many of the legends and the environment here helped me to start to paint on December 2015.”
It is no surprise that Brusco feels quite at home in her landscapes. “Where I was born, in the northwest of Italy, there is a lot of nature and I lived in little town by the sea. Here in Sweden the nature is of course more dominant and I like it very much. I really feel good in the countryside with not so many people, cars, buildings, and noises. When I have to come back to Italy, each time I just get to the train station or the airport, it´s like a little trauma to come back in a big city and I feel quite misplaced.” The details of her paintings come from what I imagine to be a peaceful study of her surroundings. “What really inspire me are the colors of the sky at dusk or dawn. There are so many tones that most of the times is so difficult to reproduce because the human eye is lured to think that, for example, a kind of pink is warmer but when you try it on the canvas it has another effect.”
About the Artwork:
I painted “Lullaby” without thinking at the title in the first place. I just wanted to experiment an Aurora Borealis with pink/violet colours and make it appear like a veil. When I finished it, in a way I perceived it like dreamish, like a veil in the sky and I thought it could be so nice to fall asleep under such a sky.
“Isfrun väg” takes the name from the Lady of the Cold in a novel by Tove Jansson from the Moomin serie. The book is called “Trollvinter” in swedish (translated as “Moominland Midvinter”) and describes the adventure lived by Moomintroll who wakes up from hibernation and experiences the winter for once with some of his friends. During the winter, strange and dangerous creatures come out from their hiding places and the Lady of the Cold is one of them. She rides around freezing and killing everything with her icy stare. I´ve read again the book before Christmas and I had the idea to try to paint her my way with her dress like Northern Lights.
http://skogens-rymd.webnode.com
COLLECTOR 