Artist of the Month is a monthly interview series where Tegnerforbundet introduces a member who is represented in our Sales Department. With this initiative, we want to give readers an insight into the members' artistic work and highlight the importance of drawing in their work.
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Tuva Synnevåg (born 1980) is a versatile animator, scenographer, figure maker and designer. Her drawings are characterized by their imitation of a world similar to ours, but with undertones of something magical and sometimes dark. Great imagination mixed with a sensitive line creates evocative and aesthetic drawings. Synnevåg mixes humor with seriousness in his detailed drawings. Synnevåg made her debut with the comic series Trygg som melk (Safe as milk ) where she received silver in Grafill's Visuelt competition. She has a Bachelor's degree in animation with a specialization in cartoons and for her graduation film Sáiva she received six awards at home and abroad. Synnevåg lives and works from Tjøme.
TF: Hi Tuva! Can you tell us about your artistic work?
TS: Work and work. I don't think I've really gotten started with my artistic work yet. I just draw as often as I can! I'm a freelancer and most of the time I draw in the commissions I get, but it can be any kind of drawing I'm commissioned to do. When it comes to my own drawings, it's something that's pressing and that I hope to have more time for in the future.
TF: Why do you draw? Tell us a bit about your work process!
TS: I guess you can't call it anything other than innate creativity! I set a goal to draw for a living when I became a single parent at the age of 20, and that's what I still do in the form of animation and illustration commissions. I haven't cracked the code yet to get a work grant, so for now my work process when it comes to my own art is to just chill every spare moment, because it's bubbling!
TF: Can you name any artists/illustrators who inspire you?
TS: Yes. Theodor Kittelsen, John Bauer, Moebius, Rithika Merchant, Calamity Cole, Steffen Kverneland, Sverre Malling, Olaf Guldbransen and many more!
TF: What themes do you address as an artist?
TS: Nature. Experience of nature. Nature mysticism. Man's relationship with nature. Man's impact on nature. Nature in man, which manifests itself in the form of mythology, fantasy and anthropomorphization. Imagination is not random. It is part of the fabric of the human mind, and imaginations and stories are our fodder. It is part of being human.
TF: What is the role of illustration and drawing today?
TS: I don't know about that. Drawing that is something real, genuine and often slow is certainly the opposite of a lot of other things in the zeitgeist right now.
TF: What does drawing mean to you and your work?
TS: A l t .
TF: Tell us a little about your work in Tegnerforbundet's sales department!
TS: For example, I've submitted a poster with drawings of fish called Sadfish. It was drawn out of the sadness of living by a dying fjord. An indescribably deep sadness that the fjord no longer provides, but not least that the life that lives/lived there, and which has intrinsic value, has not been shown respect. I think it's important to put this silent disaster on the agenda. If one day the Oslo Fjord becomes healthy again, I will draw Happyfish, if it happens in my lifetime. It's a challenging exercise to put a gloomy topic on the agenda and at the same time make it so that people can imagine having it on their walls. And it's important that people want it, because it's important that people care. That's why Sadfish is also an expression of an inner joy of creation and playing with art plans, while at the same time mixing a cartoony expression with a kind of aesthetic execution. I've heard that Sadfish has been the subject of laughter and fond memories of fish stories from the old days, and I think that's exactly what I was hoping for, because you have to love what you want to save. In addition, you have some motifs from my Tide release. Large ballpoint pen drawings from a universe that I created and that I'm still a little proud of.
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