Sofia Viol
“The absurd becomes a tool to access something emotional but indirect - a crooked route to honesty.”
Sofia Viol is a Sweden-based painter whose work blends folklore, humour, and unease into dense, layered compositions that move between intuition and art-historical influence. In this interview, Viol discusses how her imagery develops through instinct and accident, the role of absurdity in her paintings, and the material processes that shape her textured, shifting surfaces.
Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background
Where I grew up in the north of Sweden, there wasn’t much art around. When I moved to London at nineteen, I suddenly found myself immersed in different art scenes through my studies and by working for other artists, which was very exciting. That experience, together with my art education, shaped me profoundly.
It was really when I moved back to Sweden, within the feeling of isolation during those first years after leaving London, that I discovered my own visual language. I began to combine the trolls of my childhood with the wilderness of London and my interest in art history. It’s interesting how movement and physical distance from the recent past can create the space to gather and translate everything you’ve accumulated - onto the canvas.
Your paintings weave together figures, symbols, and patterns from a wide range of visual sources. How do you approach selecting and transforming these references in your work?
My process is intuitive - a pattern or a particular image triggers something, and that becomes the starting point, almost like drawing a simple line to break the surface of the canvas. This summer I took part in a group exhibition based on the Surrealist idea exquisite corpse. It struck me how closely this method reflects my way of dealing with imagery. A way of putting images together to avoid predicability. As the work develops, with more layers, more languages and more mistakes overlapping - I begin to make more conscious decisions. It sets up these echoes - like how poetry works, a chain reaction. If I have recently been to visit the collection at Mauritshuis in The Hague a still life mandarin might slip in somewhere or if I simply have seen a frog behind my studio door. So the sensation and the state of the work develops over time. Together, these elements shape and guide the emotional tone of the work. They might collide, hum together, or dissolve completely. It is a way of tricking my paintings into accidents, though they usually end up getting stuck in their own strange logic.
Plywood face, 2024- installation shot 'Hoodie Toe', Andys Gallery
Oh!, 2024
Walk, 2025
Stolen Forest, 2025
There’s a distinct mix of humour and unease in your paintings. What role does play or absurdity have in how you develop your imagery?
I’m interested in that unstable space, where humour, absurdity, and unease coexist. Humour and absurdity are vital energies in my work, they often come from my own amusement, a way of entertaining myself and keeping myself open and curious within the work. They create space for the unexpected, for things to go wrong, or to turn strange. When I let humour enter the painting, it disarms both me and the image - it becomes less about control and more about play. Often, absurdity emerges from mismatched fragments: an over - proportioned arm that doesn’t quite fit, a gesture that repeats, a face that appears where it shouldn’t or a smoking cat. The absurd becomes a tool to access something emotional but indirect - a crooked route to honesty. You are aware of the fact that you are looking at something that you cannot describe, that you can only understand or not understand. So you’re arriving at a knowledge that cannot be translated into words. It creates an instability on the surface, I think this is where the image slips in-between spaces of sincerity and irony, the decorative and the awkward.
Texture and surface seem to play a big role in your paintings. What kinds of materials or techniques do you find yourself returning to, and why?
I’m interested in the materiality of painting and its surface, It’s a central part of the painting process - how I think through painting. New materials can open up many channels for freer thinking and new possibilities. Since I often work with art historical references, I look at and emulate how others have approached the surface - how the Impressionists handled the brush, how Picasso drew, or how De Chirico constructed perspective for example. For a long time, I worked on linen, but recently I’ve been using cotton canvas, applying dyed water and fabric dye to create depth. I’ve also used iron dust mixed into the ground in order to build up the surface. I like the unpredictability that comes from layering materials that don’t entirely agree with each other - it creates friction, a surface that resists being too smooth or resolved, almost a kind of productive frustration I’m addicted to painting, but I also get bored - so I keep searching for new materials and ways to engage with the surface. At the same time, I don’t think I’ll ever truly tire of a simple brush and oil paint. I often return to sanding, scraping, and repainting, allowing traces of earlier versions to remain visible. Those buried layers create both texture and memory, a kind of sediment of time and decision. I want the surface to feel slightly off, even uncomfortable.
'Four', 2024 and 'Other Tales', 2024- Installation shot, 'Hoodie Toe' Andys Gallery
Selfie V, 2024 and Selfie II, 2024, Installation shot 'Hoodie Toe' Andys Gallery
Tell us a bit about how you spend your day / studio routine? What is your studio like?
My studio is very close by, situated right next to a nature reserve. I occasionally have snakes visiting. The space itself isn’t particularly big, but it’s my safe space - a place where I can forget myself. It’s filled with paintings, materials, and an old armchair where I sit and look at what I’ve done. I’m very cut off from the outside world there, sometimes I open the door and find it’s suddenly full-blown winter, as if I’ve been moving between different worlds. My house often feels like a shell, since I spend most of my time in the studio. I don’t have a strict routine, I’ve tried for years but never managed to keep one. I rarely go there early in the morning. Once I’m in, though, I can easily lose track of time and I stay late. I usually listen to music while working - for a long while it was Baroque, now it’s Kraftwerk -I seem to need something repetitive at the moment.
What artwork have you seen recently that has resonated with you?
I recently revisited the work of Bill Lynch. I really love his paintings on found wood. His spontaneous brushstrokes and the moiré patterns of the rough boards often become integral to his compositions, the grains transform into the skies, still water or just part of its composition. I think I’m drawn to his work because I can relate but also its very different approach to my own paintings - quiet mystical drama, open, almost dissolving, where mine tends to build and collide. His surfaces breathe; mine resist. Lynch shows how material and story can merge together. His work reminds me of how much can be done with so little - just paint, intuition, and trust in the moment. It’s profoundly poetic.
Is there anything new and exciting in the pipeline you would like to tell us about?
I’m currently developing some new work for a project with an artist friend that explores more sculptural forms using stoneware ceramics — though I won’t say too much yet, as it’s still in progress. I’m very excited about where it might lead and how it might connect back to my paintings. I’ll also be doing a couple of residencies soon, and I’m especially looking forward to the one in Mexico City next year. It will be interesting to see how I relate to my work in such a different place - discovering their imagery and their own versions of my local trolls.
All images courtesy of the artist
Interview publish date: 20/11/2025
Interview by Richard Starbuck
