ARTIST PROFILE
AN ARTIST THAT IS INTRIGUED BY ‘SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR’
Line grew up in the Norway country side, surrounded by nature. Here, she developed a curiosity for her surroundings, and later, for people’s behaviour. This lead her to study and produce captivating layered paintings, that have been sold in Norway and to collectors world wide.
“The ego is in an unpleasant state... something haunting is about to happen” -Line Gulsett
Line believes that growing up in nature was a great gift and that this connection to nature was ultimately the nurturing of her creativity and self reflection. Her ‘curiosity of surroundings’ is something that she explored during her studies in sociology and then later in her art.
Line has always been drawing ever since she was a kid. She started her art studies in Denmark, Copenhagen in a classical drawing school at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek and then went further to do an old Master/student style of studio training with an artist in Copenhagen. Here she learned the old school way to make her own paint, canvas, and gained an understanding of traditional painting skills.
Later on, Line decided to try something different and enrolled in a course at a pre-academic school, Billedeskolen in Copenhagen. After graduating here, she was then accepted to study at The Royal academy of fine arts in the Hague (KABK).
“Inspiration is a complex matter”
Line: When it comes to inspiration, I don’t have a specific thing- it can be a word, news, or just my own imagination which creates interesting experiences to be taken further. As a painter, you are often bound to your studio and it is here, where you must be a friend to loneliness. But also, here, is where I experience my mind’s ultimate freedom
The theme that is constant Line’s work is social behaviour, often looking at it on a micro level. What interests her is the collective memory of kids or young adults as it is here where they first develop their sociological behaviour and habits and where the recognition of the ego is most present in an ‘unheimlich way’ (the psychological concept of the uncanny as something that is strangely familiar).
“It starts with making sketches”
For a long time, Line develops ideas in her head and then when she is ready, she often starts with sketches in order to develop these ideas into something visual. Eventually, her works become removed from her initial idea as she attempts to make the process and outcome as open as possible.
So, her work goes from personal to perhaps more general and then back to personal, getting the viewer to look more than once. Line finds that her work is often full of contradictions and she finds these sort of contradictions in painting can be really interesting and powerful. That a painting can go from figuration to abstraction and in some cases, just simple materials, makes for a sense of trembling underneath the painterly surface.
For her drawings, she often uses coloured papers and oil pastels. For the paintings, she uses oil paint on canvas. Recently she has started experimenting with raw pigments on different painted surfaces.
‘Went too Far’, 2016 Oil pastel on black paper 63 x 45 cm Courtesy of Torch Gallery
Click here to view more works by Line Gulsett
Text by Georgia Fane Hervey Pictures by Iris Haverkamp Begemann
