These shade averse needn’t learn any additional, however should you’re like me and hunt down vivid, daring shade in artwork, design, style, and nearly in all places else, then let me introduce you to Tekla Evelina Severin.
Severin is a self-described shade addict based mostly in Stockholm, Sweden. As a multi-hyphenate colorist, designer, and photographer, her artistic background is simply as colourful as her aesthetic. She works throughout a variety of disciplines, flexing her expertise in inside design, set design, artistic path, and pictures, together with her love of shade because the unifying consider every.
After coming upon imagery of her latest exhibition “Dimensions of Color” for FORMEX in Stockholm, I instantly gravitated towards Severin’s fastidiously thought-about, but joyful aesthetic. I reached out to study extra, and Severin’s responses to some of my questions are beneath.
(This dialog has been edited and condensed for readability and size.)
The place does your love of shade come from? Have you ever at all times beloved shade?
Effectively, the place do issues actually begin? Every part in life brings us the place we’re at this time, proper?
So did it begin in my early childhood, with a powder pink, wall-to-wall rug? That’s after I unconsciously understood what shade and texture might do for an area. Or did it begin after I received dangerous escalating eyesight at age 9? I used to be devastated, and thought I’d lose it. Was it then? I received so obsessive about every part that was visually interesting as a result of it felt so valuable. I’m unsure, however I feel it positively performs an element.
Are you able to stroll me by means of your artistic journey to the place you might be at this time?
I graduated from Konstfack College of Arts and Crafts in Stockholm, the place I studied inside structure and furnishings design. Afterward, first I used to be an intern, after which an worker at an excellent structure studio in Stockholm. I slowly discovered the career, the best way to run initiatives, the best way to take care of purchasers, and about drawing structure normally.
However I felt one thing was lacking. It wasn’t solely the artistic freedom from artwork faculty— it was the conformity that was bothering and boring me; the thought concerning the Scandinavian grace with white beiges and greys. I wanted a artistic area, and we had this superb materials library within the cellar with numerous supplies and colours that had been sadly hardly used.
I began to do some sort of visible notes for myself— nonetheless lives, testing totally different combos of supplies and colours, exploring different aesthetics. I captured it with a really early sensible telephone and put it out on that new app referred to as Instagram. I hardly understood I used to be posting stuff, hilariously sufficient— I solely needed to make the most of these classic filters to avoid wasting the photographs to my digital camera roll.
However quickly, I began to get involved and join with different creatives and types around the globe. I took many child steps towards totally freelancing in 2015 and beginning my multidisciplinary journey, first by means of pictures, re-inventing, and discovering shapes and colours from scratch.
Considered one of my first commissions was creating content material for a Canadian shoe model, doing a photograph collection on the theme of home science the place I made a triangle of pink cabbage with a lilac background and a dice of meat with a pink background. They paid me in footwear!
So from these smaller scenes, I moved my digital camera towards structure and interiors. I received an actual digital camera, and for a couple of years, I solely took architectural pictures around the globe: in Guadeloupe for Air France, in Mauritius for a lodge designed by Camille Walala, in Spain of the enduring La Muralla Roja by Bofill Architects. I assumed it was actually liberating to not need to care about operate or building as when designing it. I might simply give attention to robust visible parts, outtakes angle, shadow play, colours, and many others.
However after some time, I needed to be increasingly more concerned within the design in entrance of the digital camera, so I slowly got here again to inside design, first by doing set design. Considered one of my first initiatives was for a shade collaboration for Montana Furnishings. By means of this, I felt I might come again in a brand new approach to inside design and be as free, deconstructed, and summary as I needed.
From the place do you draw inspiration? Are there different artists, individuals, locations, types, or time durations that you simply look to or who’ve influenced you?
Wherever and in all places. I can get simply as a lot inspiration from an surprising element on a backstreet as from superb artwork in a gallery. However normally, I’m impressed by fashionable and postmodern structure, artwork deco, playgrounds and video games aesthetics, surrealism, graphic design, daylight, and shadow play.
What mission of yours are you proudest of and why?
I’d say “An House of One’s Personal,” the exhibition design I did for Sancal throughout Milan Design Week final 12 months. I loved the artistic imaginative and prescient from the corporate and whole artistic freedom for me. Additionally the context (Hey, Milan Design Week!) and the extent of personalized design. I designed particular terrazzo, marbled tops, the kitchen, the e book circumstances, and many others. It’s additionally what I’m proudest of as a result of I dared to be so ornamental.
Then there’s “Dimensions of Color,” the 250 sq. meter exhibition design and curation I did myself for FORMEX, Scandinavia’s greatest truthful for inside particulars in Stockholm in January. The problem was to seek out, choose, and show 200 merchandise from over 400 exhibitors. I’m very happy with how every part got here collectively, space-wise, [and how] views and framings labored all through the entire area. Additionally, by way of shade, each facade, wall, and area of interest had totally different colours to create totally different combos. All of it illustrated my endlessly, ongoing investigation of shade. When it comes to shade concept, I at all times say, “Coloration is at all times relative, by no means absolute. It’s what you set subsequent to it that defines it.”
How do you hope viewers of your work really feel when experiencing it?
Confusion. New dazzling views. Playfulness and sweetness.
What’s your favourite shade?
It modifications on a regular basis… proper now, lime-ish yellow.
However an all-time favourite is peach— delicate, social, heat, playful, but subtle.
