Art Hound

Klara Lindahl is a Swedish illustrator via Gills. Elements of Klara’s work remind me of another Swedish artist, Camille Engman.

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Camilla Engman knocks my socks off every time. I know I’ve said this before, but in my book Camilla is one of the most amazing colorists (Mark Ryden is another favorite). In her work it’s ALL about the colors.

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Drawings and collages by Swedish graphic design and illustration student Saga Bergebo (via Pikaland). I don’t know about you but I’m pretty smitten.

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Work for sale here.

When it comes to art I don’t believe in playing favorites, but I will say that Camilla Engman‘s work is really up there for me. What makes her work so special, you might ask? Well, here are a few key reasons I rounded up.

1. Color palette: Earthy, organic and modern, Camilla’s color palette is a signature element of her work.

2. Compositions: Sometimes more traditional, sometimes more experimental (like Shooting Stars, below), Camilla’s compositions rock. They are super simple but work so well. Clearly a ton of thought goes into these seemingly “simple” pieces.

3. Use of materials: Camilla has an uncanny way of using various materials in clever and unusual ways. Take Never, below, for example. The old-fashioned blue-lined paper cloud and spiky vertical-text hair are both genius.

4. Surrealism: Engman’s work inhabits a slightly-unsettling, dream-like space. There is often a vague, Freudian narrative in these scenes which make us wonder “just what is going on here?”

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In this way, Engman’s work reminds me of that of Italian surrealist Giorgio de Chirico (see The Soothsayer’s Recompense, below). Both Engman and de Chirico’s work have a sense of wide open space and an air of mystery and possibility. Both artists leave it to our own imaginations to fill in the missing pieces.