sofia viol

Lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden

Artist statement

My practice is rooted in painting, where I primarily work with oil on linen. I typically create small to medium format works, exploring a range of dynamic techniques and visual influences. My motifs and forms draw from a diverse range of sources, from art history to Pinterest, from patterns in medieval embroidery and Asian ikat rugs to the transparency of smoke, cartoons, graffiti, or a painted mandarin in the Mauritshuis Collection. I play with proportions and intuitively distort figures, poses, and symbols to create polyphonic surfaces that are often humorous, surreal, or even absurd. Fleeting glances and isolated fragments, a hand, a foot, are stripped of their usual narrative function and placed into a liminal space where unexpected connections emerge. Another central aspect of my practice is material exploration; I continually experiment with various surfaces, formats, and methods of applying paint. In my studio, I work on multiple paintings at once. Each piece begins with a loose idea or an image that sets the emotional tone, evolving through a process of layering, scraping away, and repainting. I view this as an open dialogue with the work, driven by improvisation and responsiveness to the materials at hand. It is often this uncertainty that gives the painting its energy - its own language unfolding on its own terms.

Artwork