Inesa Levnell
Based in Västra Götaland, Sweden, I am developing a contemporary painting practice centred on acrylic painting, visible texture and the space between recognisable form and abstraction.
Before focusing more deeply on painting, I worked for many years within IT, software testing and quality assurance. That background still influences the way I build images: through structure, analysis, repetition, layers and careful visual decisions.
My work moves between portrait, figure, memory and bodily presence. I am interested in images that feel familiar but not fixed — direct enough to be recognised, but open enough for the viewer to bring something of their own.
Current Work
I am currently developing two parallel bodies of work.
Collection I is a portrait series exploring emotional presence, distance, tension, control, vulnerability and the gradual reopening of contact. The paintings use close compositions, strong colour areas and visible acrylic texture to create portraits that remain open rather than fully explained.
Alongside this, I am developing Collection II — Between Movements, a figurative series focused on the body in transitional states between rest and action. Faces are concealed or removed from view, allowing posture, balance and gesture to carry the emotional weight.
Both series are connected by the same visual language: acrylic on canvas, large colour planes, visible texture, reduced detail and a balance between figure and abstraction.
Artist Statement
My work begins with the question of how much presence a painting can hold without explaining everything.
I am drawn to images that feel familiar but remain unresolved: a face remembered rather than described, a body seen through a fragment, a gesture that suggests more than it tells.
I do not want to make paintings that give the viewer one fixed story. I want to create images that stay open — human, physical and slightly uncertain.
Through colour, texture, composition and reduction, I explore the point where recognition begins to shift into abstraction.
