As the granddaughters of Norwegian Americans, most of what we know about our skandi heritage was passed down via folk art, craft, and painting. Our grandfather loved to woodwork, and our grandmother mastered the Norwegian folk art technique of rosemåling. In addition to rosemåling, our grandmother was a skilled landscape painter, and embraced a particularly norse pallet for her pastoral scenes. When we first became familiar with Irene’s work, though decidedly more modern, I couldn’t help but be hugely nostalgic for her distinctly nordic pallet and textures.

We met Irene in early summer in the middle of her California road trip- traveling from Copenhagen on vacation down the California coast, buying vintage cowboy boots for her littlest son, Pepijn, and surfing with her eldest, Beau, along the way. Irene is a mother and an artist with a warm, open personality and a fierce talent. Her pieces are abstract and represent the colors, feelings, and emotions of her native Nordic region. She creates her pieces at home, with her family (husband and two sons) involved in the expression, surrounded by canvases and paint. Over tea, we discussed Irene’s career path and how she was successfully able to transition from being an attorney to create a professional identity for herself as an artist by working on paintings in her free time and eventually receiving commercial interest. See below for photos Irene took with her boys in their native Copenhagen - at home, in the city, and on the shore.

You can see Irene’s work here, I especially love her “Nordic Feeling” series and the underlying happiness/coziness that it provokes.

– MK