Elin Norrby

Elin Norrby paints in a small attic studio in Uppsala, Sweden, where a single window looks out onto a stand of birch trees. Before turning to painting, she earned a BA in Textile Design from HDK School of Design and Crafts in Gothenburg and spent years as a textile print designer. That work taught her how much a single flat shape can carry, and how little it needs around it. It is a lesson that runs through every piece she makes, rooted in Scandinavian folk art and pared back with a minimalist’s restraint.

Each painting centers on one animal, laid down in just three or four opaque, matte gouache colors on smooth, warm cream paper. She keeps the edges soft and leaves the space around her subject wide and quiet, so a hare, a bird or a fox seems to rest calmly on the page. Reproduced on canvas, her work brings a gentle, uncluttered warmth to nurseries and kids’ rooms, bedrooms, reading corners, entryways and Scandinavian-inspired living spaces. Below are Norrby’s canvases in our shop, ready to hang.