Scan Magazine | Artist of the Month | Norway
Left: Evening red. Building layers upon layers in her current acrylics works, Bryne draws inspiration from how she previously worked with watercolours. Right: Winter day. Inspired by nature, Bryne’s works are now mostly abstract.
Artist of the Month, Norway
From watercolours to acrylics with the ebbs and flows of the sea From naturalistic watercolour creations to more abstract acrylics work, Stavangerbased artist Annette Bryne has gone from a concrete naturalistic motif towards a wish to work with colours in more flowing methods. By Line Elise Svanevik | Photos: Annette Bryne
The Norwegian artist is very much inspired by the sea and, with a stroke of luck, every studio she has ever had has been located by the sea. She has changed her style of work to move away from her signature pebbles, though she suggests that she is painting the same motifs, albeit in a completely different way. “What I feel like I’ve done is that I’ve taken the watercolour technique into acrylics in order to keep the transparent look. I’ve thinned out the colours and used layers upon layers – which is exactly what I used to do with the pebbles. I put the layers on very gradually, 90 | Issue 107 | December 2017
to achieve the right depth in the works,” she explains.
Fascinated by the sea Bryne is fascinated by the ebb and flow of the sea, and walking along the sea and seeing the pebbles lying there under the surface, in sunshine or rain and exposed to the air as the sea pulls out, is something she finds incredibly inspiring. “The shoreline is always there and constant, but there is a continuous movement around it,” she says. Working from a studio in Paradis in Stavanger, Bryne shares a workspace
with ten other artists. “It’s really inspiring. The fact that we can have meetings and eat lunch together and discuss art – and ask each other for help and guidance – is great,” she says. “The artists are all incredibly generous with each other. We help pull each other up and forward. It’s really nice to be in this sort of environment, and it’s nice to get out of the house so you don’t end up accidentally doing the laundry when you should be working.”
Award-winning artist Bryne recently won the Winsor&Newton award, an annual accolade awarded by the Nordic Watercolour Society, which includes members from all the Nordic countries. The jury is a collaboration between the five Nordic countries. Bryne was also recently invited to display her works as part of two very large