Bente Tømmerås: Artistic liberty

By Eva-Kristin U. Pedersen | Photos: Bente Tømmerås

Talking to Scan Magazine, the Norwegian artist Bente Tømmerås shares her thoughts on what inspires her, and why she is better with paint than words.

Tømmerås has been an active artist for some 15 years. She has studied at several art schools in Norway, as well as the Angel Art Academy in Florence. A member of several Norwegian art associations, including Landsforeningen Norske Malere (the National Association of Norwegian Painters), she has an extensive exhibition history, with both solo and group shows to her name.

This year, her work has been featured in the London Art Biennale and in Anonyme Zeichner in Hamburg, Germany. In addition, two of her pieces were selected for the project Askers historie i kunst – an artistic exploration of the history of Asker, a municipality just outside Oslo.

Festen, 120 x 90 cm (2025) by Bente Tømmerås.

Difficult not to look at

Tømmerås works both figuratively and abstractly and her art, which includes both paintings and drawings, is often colourful and with a vibrant expression. It has an almost strikingly immediate appeal; it is simply difficult not to look at it.

Yet Tømmerås admits that she sometimes struggles to describe her own art in words. When asked what drives her, what inspires her, she has to pause to think.

“My art is spontaneous and intuitive. But the inspiration has to come from something I’ve experienced, something that made an impression on me,” she says after a while. “It’s what appears in front of me while working, not the history of how it got there, that matters, I think,” she adds.

Vernissage, 100 x 120 cm (2019) by Bente Tømmerås.

Impressions from a vernissage

Take Vernissage, one of Tømmerås’ paintings from a few years back. This is the scene: people, or more or less distinguishable shapes of people, mingle and look at paintings. It is abstract but real, so real that you can almost hear the buzz of the small talk which is occasionally interrupted by outbursts of convivial laughter.

The painting oozes with that distant yet intimate atmosphere that characterises vernissages. “I painted it after the opening of my first solo exhibition – I started drawing immediately after I came home in the evening,” Tømmerås explains when asked about the background of the painting.

Letting the colours lead

Tømmerås enjoys working in an abstract style, allowing colours and shapes to guide the process, with the motif emerging only toward the end. One such piece is Såmannen, a painting she did in 2020. “In the beginning, it was purely abstract, then the figure appeared after a while,” she explains. It is not important to her that the viewer sees what she sees. “I don’t want to dictate what other people see in my art,” she stresses.

One technique she likes to employ is blind contour drawing, where the artist looks only at the motif, not the paper. The result looks almost like cartoons. “It creates a very true, yet somewhat distorted shape. I find it very interesting,” Tømmerås says.

Another technique Tømmerås uses is free compositions in large formats, using markers. When working on these, Tømmerås explains that she just starts somewhere, and then works her way towards a composition. In order to do that, it is important for her to work without restrictions. “It needs to be spontaneous; the artistic liberty is an objective in its own right,” she explains.

Landskap, 150 x 200 cm (2025) by Bente Tømmerås.

It has to matter

To achieve that liberty, Tømmerås says, she needs to be what you would call in the zone; she needs to feel that the flow is natural and not forced. To get to that point, she not only has to be able to work without interruptions; she has to feel strongly about what she is trying to express. “I need to have an opinion, to feel that something is important. That’s what produces a good result,” she says.