Stina Persson

Stina Persson is from the little Swedish town Lund, she has also lived in Tokyo, Florence and New York, where she also came to terms with the way ordinary people live. She now lives with her husband and two sons in Stockholm, and also works there.

"I have fallen into quite and interesting field," is Stina Persson's explanation for her main design field. "What is asked from me is fashion illustrations, though they are rarely for fashion brands or companies. Instead it is clients that want a fashion look. It could be anything from cars to hand soap."

Her motifs often come from the world of fashion, travel and glamour. But angle, rough edges, raw, incomplete patched keep cropping up in her elegant water-colour, gouche and ink compositions.

Her fields of work have included literally everything, from skateboard design to shrimp salad packaging and interesting Japanese and New York-based fine art projects.

"Ideally I want it to have a rough edge, but to be beautiful as well. Just being rough or distorted is too easy. On the other hand, only being pretty is so very boring. When working with ink, I like to use wooden sticks that I pick up from the ground to draw with as they seem to make an interesting line. For colour I use Doctor Martin's transparent dyes, acrylics or paper collage."

What I really like about Stina is that she gets inspired by watching people around her. "When I lived in New York, I loved the roughness and all the ugliness of Queens, where I lived. It made me really open my eyes and forced me to search for hidden beauty. The people of New Yorkers to the greatest inspiration there is."