ArtistSwedish
Pernilla Stappe
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Pernilla Petersson Stappe was born in 1967 in Motala and grew up in Fristad, outside Borås. Art was part of her upbringing from the start: her father is the artist Jan-Owe Stappe (born 1939), and painting was present throughout her childhood rather than something she came to later. She spent the 1990s working professionally as an Art Director, a career that sharpened her eye for composition and color, before leaving that role in 2003 to commit fully to painting.
Her subject matter is deceptively specific: parties, concerts, weddings, toasts, dances, quiet conversations in cafes. These are scenes of people together, caught at a moment of anticipation or pleasure. She has described her paintings as snapshots of a life she herself does not always get to live, images made from a kind of tender longing as much as from observation. The figures are stylized rather than naturalistic, defined by gesture and color rather than detailed anatomy, and the canvases have a warmth that reads immediately across a room.
Stappe works primarily in oil on canvas and in acrylic, alongside a substantial body of prints. Her lithographs, often hand-colored and produced in limited editions of around 237 to 325 copies, show the same figurative language as her paintings. The printmaking practice has widened her reach considerably: signed and numbered lithographs appear regularly at Swedish auction houses including Göteborgs Auktionsverk, Bukowskis, and Stockholms Auktionsverk, alongside original canvases.
She has exhibited across Sweden with solo shows at Galleri Part and Galleri Ferm in Gothenburg, Galleri Melefors in Linköping, Galleri Couleur in Stockholm, and at venues in Borås including Karlenström and Borås Konsthall. Her work is held by public and private collectors and has been shown at Landvetter Airport. She is based in Mjöshult, outside Borås, where she continues to work.