Jenny Carlsson’s (b. 1984) powerfully evocative paintings combine the fury of nature with the familiar, unassuming earthiness of a wintry landscape. Bedarra refers to the moment when a violent storm finally subsides. It is this very moment of nature’s mollification that Carlsson strives to capture in her oil paintings, which depict transitional states of colors metamorphosing, colliding and evaporating into thin air. Her palette and textures evoke a sense of soil and bedrock, yet they also call to mind a human agricultural imprint on the earth’s surface. Carlsson variably works in large and small scale. Her large canvases are expeditions into wild terrain, decomposing grasslands and bottomless rivers, whilst her smaller paintings focus our gaze on more distant horizons.

In her latest works, Carlsson’s brushstrokes are more generous, her colors bolder, and the physical traces of her technique are more visible. Painting as she does with oils – a dirty technique, if you will – requires intense concentration and absolute presence. Her method is both meticulous and intuitive. Carlsson reflects on ways of seeing, and how paintings can alter the way we see and experience the world around us.