I am Sofia Larsson. I pour the aurora over Nordic water and paint two or three sharp things against it. This piece has one reindeer on a ridge under green and magenta sky. The rest is flow.
Calm is not the absence of anything. It takes work.
The reindeer had to be alone
I painted six versions with a herd. Every time, the eye went to the herd and stayed there. The aurora became a backdrop.
One animal on one ridge: now the sky can move. The reindeer is a measure, not a subject. It tells you how big the night is.
Ruby said the silhouette adds compelling contrast. She is right, but that is not why it is there. It is there so the green has something to pour past.
Two hundred litres before I got the magenta right
I tilt the canvas and let thinned paint run. No brush in the sky. The aurora flows because the paint actually flowed.
Magenta is the hardest. Too much and it looks like a nightclub. Too little and the green sits there like wallpaper. This one took eleven pours before the magenta moved the way the aurora moves over Kiruna in February.
The canvas holds the flow better than paper. The texture catches the layers where they overlap, so you see green over blue over violet, the way you actually see it at seventy degrees north.
The ridge is a line I painted with a card
Charlotte called this captivating and said US collectors will engage with it. I think they will hang it in a hallway or a bedroom, somewhere they want a window that is not a window.
The ridge is one line, painted with the edge of a plastic card, no brush. The reindeer is four hours of detail work with a fine brush. Everything else is gravity, pigment and three days waiting for layers to dry between pours.
This is for someone who wants the far north on their wall and knows one animal is enough. Not for a busy room or someone who needs a picture to tell a story. The sky is the story.
Gallery-wrapped canvas, in 3 sizes — 12×16, 18×24, 24×32 in. Ships free within the continental US.
