Linn Fernström

Her large-scale oil paintings and drawings operate in the space between waking life and the unconscious. Human figures, animals, and dense natural detail - insects, flowers, tangled vegetation - coexist in compositions that feel both ordinary and unsettling. A child suspended in a net, a boy carried aloft, a nighttime fisherman: her titles and images alike resist neat resolution. She draws on the lineage of European figurative painting, with visible debts to symbolism and Northern European romanticism, while the emotional temperature of her work is unmistakably contemporary. The idyllic and the threatening occupy the same canvas without canceling each other out.

Dragonflies appear with particular regularity in her paintings and prints, often in self-portrait contexts. In works like "Tre Målare," she depicts herself painting dragonflies from three angles simultaneously - a meditation on observation, repetition, and the act of making images. Her self-portraits more broadly function as inquiries rather than declarations: the artist in the image is rarely settled or triumphant, more often caught mid-gesture, mid-thought.

Fernström has been represented by Galerie Forsblom since 2008, with solo exhibitions in Stockholm and Helsinki including "Luften bakom din rygg" (2018), "Changeling" in Helsinki (2015-2016), and "Vått Landskap" (2023). She has shown in international group exhibitions in China and Italy, and a significant retrospective was mounted at the newly expanded Liljevalchs Konsthall in Stockholm in October 2021. An earlier exhibition at Sörmlands Museum in 2022 brought together paintings, sculptures, pastels, and poetry.

Her prints constitute a significant strand of the practice in their own right. She has produced two major series of drypoint engravings, in 2008 and 2012, and her graphic work circulates widely in the secondary market.

Fernström's work enters permanent collections with regularity. She is held at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Malmö Konstmuseum, Östergötlands Museum, and Bonniers Konsthall, as well as in numerous private collections. She lived and worked in New York for a period before returning to Stockholm, where she continues to be based.

On the Auctionist platform, Fernström is represented by 40 items across auctions, with a strong concentration at Bukowskis Stockholm, which accounts for the large majority of her auction appearances. Her work spans prints, drawings, paintings, and mixed media. The top recorded sale in our database is 52,000 SEK for an oil painting titled "Ica" (1996), followed by 26,366 SEK for "Det trasiga rummet". Her prints and drypoints regularly achieve prices in the 4,000-9,000 SEK range.