Line Marsdal: Inside the colourful and curious world of Line Marsdal

By Celina Tran | Photos: Line Marsdal

In a light-filled corner of Oslo’s Grünerløkka, artist Line Elghøy Marsdal has built a world that blurs the lines between atelier, gallery, playground, and neighbourhood living room.

Born in 1974 and raised in Oslo, mostly in Grefsen, founder of Purenkel galleri and multidisciplinary artist Marsdal explains that she has always had the urge to create. “From a young age, I’ve felt this curiosity about what something could become, whether it was on a drawing sheet, with the little treasure-bits of wood in the shed, or a lump of clay, a rope end, or a piece of metal.”

“With both my mother and grandmother being entrepreneurs, it felt natural to think that I would make a living working for myself one day,” she says. This instinct carried her through years of experimentation – studies in photography and graphic design, creative jobs, and a period of artistic exploration that ultimately led her to printmaking disciplines such as collagraph, silkscreen, and photopolymer techniques at Norske Grafikeres Verksted.

For about five years, relief- and intaglio-printing were her main focus. This period laid the foundation for what would later become a recognisable bridge in her work: a playful, art-meets-design sensibility. But in time, the press could no longer contain the ideas she wanted to pursue.

“After several wonderful years with the printing press, I needed to work with other materials, in larger sizes, and to spend more time exploring new ideas and expressions,” she says. “I also found the freedom I needed in working with processes without having a fixed end result. Painting allowed me to start a piece without knowing where it would end, starting a new adventure in my studio.”

GENERASJONSLAGRINGSENHET.

A canvas full of tiny problems

Marsdal paints in acrylic, often on larger canvases. Her works balance contrast and flow, or as she describes it, an energetic tension between chaos and calm. “I guess I’m hunting for a result where noise and peace work together in the painting,” she reflects. “It’s the thing that combines everything and gives the feeling of finding your favourite chocolate in the candy bag on a random Tuesday.”

The artist continues: “I often describe my paintings as a canvas full of small problems. They must all be solved individually, but also with the surrounding problems in mind. It can be frustrating – sometimes so much that the canvas must be put away for a while before the breakthroughs come.”

And how does she know when a painting is finished? “When the candy bag has grown quite full, and it’s still only Tuesday.”

Line Marsdal in atelier.

Stories, symbols, and the slightly surreal

Marsdal’s artworks often contain several layers beneath the colourful surface. A viewer may first see something playful or whimsical, only to discover satire, rebellion against conformity, or fairy-tale elements that nudge us slightly out of everyday life. Words, stories, and titles are integral to her creative process. Sometimes the words come first; sometimes they arrive as she paints.

Her Oslo pieces, for instance, are not literal cityscapes, but distilled sensations of urban living. Characters in her works often face away from the viewer. “I try to make the viewer less concerned with who the person I painted is, and more with who the person could be in their own story. Perspective and scale follow the narrative, not realism. The chair can easily be larger than the house, if that’s what pulls a thread of thought.”

BYENS SJATTERINGER.

Alongside painting and DGA, Marsdal has, in recent years, devoted herself to a playful and evolving mixed-media project: The Reinvented Series. It began with a stack of misprints and test-prints. Throwing them away felt wrong, so she gave herself a challenge to transform existing finished motifs so they told a new story, perhaps even reinventing them several times with different results. She allowed herself to play around with acrylic, oil sticks, thread, pencil, ink, and so on, and the project reawakened a sketchbook-type freedom that is now seeping back into her paintings, too.

With two major solo exhibitions just finished, preparations for 2026 already underway, and possible international shows on the horizon, Marsdal has plenty on her plate. For now, however, she lingers in long atelier nights with a sketchbook nearby.