Artist of the Month, Norway
Art that puts a smile on your face She has custom-made art by appointment for the Royal Family of Norway and spent years of her life in the metropoles of San Fransisco and Rio de Janeiro. But no matter how many miles from home, textile artist Benita Tornholm always longs for what inspires her the most – Norwegian nature.
same. I choose to express myself in a different manner, with textile, a scissor and a sewing machine,” she says. Photo: Tanya Tornholm
By Åsa H. Aaberge | Photos: Benita Tornholm
With a sewing machine, colourful fabrics and creative stitching, Tornholm creates what she describes as “textile paintings”. The motifs are her impressions of Norwegian nature and architecture – always with a humorous and naive undertone and with an aim to make people smile. “My wish is that my pictures get people in a good mood. I wish for my work to be a contrast to all the sad and 126 | Issue 124 | May 2019
painful things happening in the world,” says Tornholm.
Art in the blood Creativity is in Tornholm’s blood, and her career started already when she, as a little girl, got a sewing machine and started to make her own clothes. “My mother, Thorhild Augensen, is a landscape oil painter, and her father did the