Artist Camilla Engström Wanted to Be the Next Georgia O’Keeffe. Now She’s Found Her Own Story | Artnet News (2024)

“For a long time, I was obsessed with Georgia O’Keeffe,” said artist Camilla Engström during a call from her California home. “I love her art and I love the way she dressed, the way she lived. I wanted to be her I think.”

Engström, who was born and raised in Sweden, paints metaphysical and sensual imaginary landscapes in a psychedelic range of colors, surrealistic terrains with supple crests and valleys that have earned comparisons to O’Keeffe’s Southwestern vision from almost a century ago. “Southwestern deserts fascinate me. They feel timeless,” Engström explained, “As a foreigner, there is really nothing like it.”

Artist Camilla Engström Wanted to Be the Next Georgia O’Keeffe. Now She’s Found Her Own Story | Artnet News (1)

Camilla Engström’s work, installed on a billboard in Marfa, Texas, 2024. Courtesy of Marfa Invitational.

Earlier this year a billboard adorned with one of Engström’s landscapes was installed in Marfa, Texas, as part of the Marfa Invitational–creating a dialogue between the artist’s work and the landscapes that have long inspired her. “I think it looked so cool,” Engström said with a laugh. A self-taught painter, she admits she enjoys encounters with art beyond gallery walls. Aside from O’Keeffe, she’s also earned comparisons to Hilma af Klint, a fellow Swede and a 19th-century visionary artist, whose works were intended for an immersive art chapel. “Her works were very important to me growing up,” said Engström.

But Engström’s own works have found plenty of institutional support in their own right. Right now, her work is on view in the group show “Dog Days of Summer” at Timothy Taylor in New York, alongside legendary artists from Pablo Picasso to Kiki Smith. Her work has been the focus of solo shows with Carl Kostyal, Over The Influence, and KONIG, among others. Currently, she’s preparing for a forthcoming solo exhibition with Carl Kostyál in September.

For the last five years, the artist has been working without breaks. “I find it very hard to turn things down,” she admitted. That drive is rooted in the struggles of her early artistic journey. Moving to New York from Sweden to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology School in the late aughts, Engström took work as a fashion assistant but was disillusioned with the field. To make ends meet, Engström started making embroidered clothes, drawings, and even stickers and candles, which she sold online and through social media. “I wasn’t thinking of myself as an artist. I was thinking more as an entrepreneur,” she said. “I was just trying to get by, not knowing what I wanted to do.”

On her social media, Engström adopted an alter-ego, “Husa” (meaning housemaid in Swedish), whose drawings she began to post online, too. “This was around the time Instagram first became a thing. I was posting my drawings. I didn’t have any followers. I didn’t feel weird since I had nothing to lose,” she recalled. Soon enough other artists began to comment on the drawings, asking if they were available for sale. “The first drawing I sold was for $40,” she recalled, “I thought it was so expensive, but I needed the money.”

From those early drawings, Engström began a decade-long journey of artistic exploration, teaching herself how to paint through trial and error. “Eventually, I got a studio with no windows in a basement. It was an open studio that I shared with two guys,” she said. “It wasn’t an inspiring space at all, but I was in love with having my own space. It made me think I could maybe become an artist.”

Engström says she only really began to “feel ready” as an artist after making the leap to oil painting a few years later. “I felt like something was going to open up if I did, but I was so scared. I’m not formally trained as a painter so there’s been a lot of mistakes,” she said, smiling. After making a few small works in oil (even working with water-based oil, typically used by children), she stapled a large canvas to her wall because she couldn’t afford stretcher bars. She painted her first large-scale oil landscape and, as she’d hoped: “Something shifted for me then.”

Over the years, Engström’s works have continued to find new forms. Her early love landscapes of burnt oranges and reds for the desert, have, more recently, given way to more vegetal greens and lush hues. She sees something uniquely Swedish in these newest works. Her father (who is of Swedish background, and her mother is of Chinese descent) send the artist clips of films and photographs from his childhood around Sweden. “My father was sick at the time. Taking his time to sending me those pictures while he was sick, meant so much to me,” she said.

Another recent influence has been the work of Swedish landscape artist Helmer Osslund, who painted at the turn of the last century. She discovered his work at a museum on a recent trip back to Sweden. She was captivated by the artist’s pulsating sense of line and intuitive use of color.

“On some level, my work has always been very inspired by Sweden, but it’s always changing and I never I never sketch,” she said “All these images come together in my mind,” she said. “It’s a forever dream to move back, but I think maybe if I did move back, I wouldn’t feel the same. Part of it is dreaming about home,” she said. Today, Engström paints from morning to early afternoon, with large furniture brushes she feels are “just the right size.” She still posts her work on her Instagram, and, for several years, posted infectiously happy videos of her dancing in the studio. “I want to make people feel happy,” she said, “Though I think my dancing did confuse some people”

Artist Camilla Engström Wanted to Be the Next Georgia O’Keeffe. Now She’s Found Her Own Story | Artnet News (3)

Camilla Engström, Morning Hike (2024) Courtesy of the artist.

California’s Central Coast terrains have also been seeping into her latest compositions, too, if even subconsciously. For the past few years, the artist and her boyfriend have been living on the Central Coast, renting a local empty storefront as a studio, while a home Engström had purchased in Los Angeles has been renovated.

“For me, I thought the paintings look like Sweden, but a Swedish friend said they look like California,” she said “It’s a mix of both worlds.” Lately, Engström has been contemplating her next move, her next horizon. The home in Los Angeles is finally ready to move in, but Engström isn’t quite prepared to leave behind her country life.

“I’m always dreaming about the future and who I’m going be in the future,” she said wistfully, “But being here, meeting ranchers and cowboys and animals, I don’t want to leave. I’ve started gardening, so my dream now is that I’m going to make a life up here where I’m a painter and a gardener. Maybe I’ll even get some chickens, too.”

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Artist Camilla Engström Wanted to Be the Next Georgia O’Keeffe. Now She’s Found Her Own Story | Artnet News (2024)

FAQs

Artist Camilla Engström Wanted to Be the Next Georgia O’Keeffe. Now She’s Found Her Own Story | Artnet News? ›

Artist Camilla Engström Wanted to Be the Next Georgia O'Keeffe. Now She's Found Her Own Story. The Swedish-born artist is currently preparing for her London solo-show with Carl Kostyal in September.

Who is the artist Georgia who is known for her flower canvases? ›

Born in 1887, Georgia O'Keeffe was an American artist who painted nature in a way that showed how it made her feel. She is best known for her paintings of flowers and desert landscapes.

Who is modern artist Georgia O Keeffe? ›

Georgia O'Keeffe is best known for her paintings of magnified flowers, animal skulls, and New Mexico desert landscapes. This exhibition brings together some of her most important works, including Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 1932, the most expensive painting by a female artist ever sold at auction.

Where was Georgia O Keeffe a female artist during the 1800s from? ›

Born on November 15, 1887, the second of seven children, Georgia Totto O'Keeffe grew up on a farm near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin.

What are the titles of 3 of this artist's works Georgia O Keeffe? ›

  • Blue-02 Georgia O'Keeffe • 1916.
  • Sunrise Georgia O'Keeffe • 1916.
  • Nude Series VIII Georgia O'Keeffe • 1917.
  • Music Pink and Blue Georgia O'Keeffe • 1918.
  • Series I, No. ...
  • Grey Line With Black, Blue And Yellow Georgia O'Keeffe • 1923.
  • Red Canna Georgia O'Keeffe • 1923.
  • From the Lake Georgia O'Keeffe • 1924.

Who is the famous female flower artist? ›

The American artist Georgia O'Keeffe is best known for her close-up, or large-scale flower paintings, which she painted from the mid-1920s through the 1950s.

Who was the artist that cut his canvas? ›

There are some melancholy aspects to an elegant retrospective, at the Met Breuer, of the Italian artist Lucio Fontana, who is famous for the monochrome canvases, neatly slashed with knives, that he made—or executed—between 1958 and his death, ten years later, at the age of sixty-nine.

Who did Georgia O'Keeffe marry? ›

Alfred Stieglitz of Lake George, New York, and Miss Georgia T. O'Keeffe of Lake George, New York, were by [Joseph M. Marini] united in Holy Matrimony according to the ordinance of God and the laws of New Jersey at Cliffside Park on the Eleventh day of December 1924."

What was Georgia O'Keeffe's last painting? ›

O'Keeffe's post-macular artwork

She finished her last unassisted oil paintings in 1972. In one, Black Rock with Blue Sky and White Clouds, a stone dominates the canvas, a sliver of blue sky and clouds behind it. In another, The Beyond, a wide band of darkness at the bottom of the canvas creeps toward the horizon line.

What is Georgia O Keeffe's ancestry? ›

Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was born November 15, 1887, on a farm near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Her father, Francis Calixtus O'Keeffe was of Irish heritage, and her mother, Ida Totto was of Dutch and Hungarian descent.

What is the largest collection of Georgia O Keeffe? ›

O'Keeffe's O'Keeffes: The Artist's Collection | The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. The Milwaukee Art Museum has the fourth largest O'Keeffe collection in the United States and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, which was founded in 1997, has the largest.

Who is the mother of American modernism? ›

Georgia O'Keeffe: The Mother Of American Modernism.

Who is the famous paper flower artist? ›

Tiffanie Turner is an architect, author, and artist known for her small, meticulously detailed paper flowers and her giant paper botanical sculptures. At both scales, her sculptures of flowers deform, reform, pile up, contradict, and contort what we think of as a typical blossom.

Who is known for flower paintings? ›

Vincent Van Gogh

The first series, done in Paris in 1888, depicts the flowers lying on the ground. The second, more famous set was executed a year later in Arles, and shows a bouquet of sunflowers in a vase. The vivid yellows were made possible by the introduction of new pigments that Van Gogh used eagerly.

Who was one of the first artists to paint on shaped canvases? ›

Born at the end of the nineteenth century, Peter László Peri, was a Hungarian artist and sculptor who many believe was the original innovator of the shaped canvas. He moved to Vienna, and then to Berlin in 1921, at which time he simplified his name and created his first geometric abstract reliefs.

What is the meaning behind Georgia O Keeffe's work? ›

Georgia O'Keeffe was a modernist painter, renowned for her distinctive enlarged flower paintings. Though she rejected efforts to prescribe specific meanings to her art, O'Keeffe's flower pieces frequently evoke themes of femininity, sexuality, and organic abstraction.

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