Astrid Strömberg's paintings grabs you with their intensity and bold colors. There is something unsettling about her extremely sharp surfaces that gets under your skin and I love that about the work.
How would you describe yourself as a creator?
I would describe myself as a painter that is obsessed with surface. I am a pedant and introvert (at least while working), and a daydreamer.
What kind of themes do you like to work with in your art?
The figurations seen in my works are fragments that are connected to the digital world and popular culture. What interests me is usually a mixture of emotions, images, environments, that are woven together into a associativ play. I reorganise information (visuals) and mess with the meaning and place of the reference/ appropriated material and creating new sites for them to inhabit. I like a cartoon’s flat aesthetics that elevate feelings touching upon reality as fabrication.
Where do you work and what kind of a place is it to you?
I have a studio in Ala-Malmi, five minutes walk from where I live. It was important to me, to have my studio near my home. I like that I can walk there at any time during the day, and don’t need to commute or spend time going to the studio. I can go there in my pyjama if I feel to, or just run over there to do something that I feel in the moment needs to be done.My studio is super important to me, it is a messy personal space, not cosy or aesthetically pleasing but still so much of comfort to me to be there working. It is a place for solitude, fun and anxiety.
How do you tune in to your creative channel and get ideas for your work?
I would more think that it is the other way around, how to tune out of the creative channel, I sometimes feel that I am constantly thinking and observing things for works or ideas. If I am not in the studio, I collect referens materials, seek for colours in my surrounding, read, watch movies for inspiration and look at photos from my studio. In the end of the day at the studio I take photos of my paintings I been working on so that I can look at them, the last thing before go to sleep or during morning coffee before going back to the studio. For me going for long walks with my dog has been of huge importance to tune out of just thinking and obsessing over my work.
Astrid Strömberg was part of Marcy's Unraveling exhibition in 2020.
