I don’t know about you, but I’m a nosy empathic person and love knowing more about the person behind the art. So I decided to set up a series of artist interviews to scratch that itch. Here is the first interview in this series with artist, and all round lovely human being, Elise Aabakken.

Shelley Skail: Hello and thank you for agreeing to do an artist interview.  It’s so lovely to get to chat with you (almost) face-to-face.

I’m going to start out with that question that creatives ALWAYS get asked, but is still super interesting – where do you get your ideas from for your art?

Elise Aabakken: Well, it really resonated with me when I read Big Magic about following your curiosity and what you’re interested in. I love playing with colour and my art supplies often spark ideas, especially colours that remind me of something I want to try creating. Otherwise, I usually take a lot of photos when I’m out on walks – they are a great source to look back on, sometimes to recreate a scene or a mood or a landscape.

I also try to get inspired from different [artistic] sources so I don’t end up copying anyone, I can usually tell if something I make feels too close to someone else’s work, and some of the pieces I’m most proud of and feel the most connected to are ideas that I feel like really come from me.

Also – doing a class, saving a new technique in the “tool belt” and then building my own stuff! 

Speaking about getting inspired by other artists – who are the top 3 artists that YOU like to look at? What other artists would you have on your wall?

There’s a wonderful artist – Alyse Dietel – she’s a rock climber. She does a lot of portraits and she does super intricate ink drawings. Her Instagram account name is a million tiny lines.

She has all of these beautiful, super details. She just added one with two hands holding a mountain, and there’s waterfalls coming off. It’s super beautiful.

I really like art where there’s something to see from far away. And then when you get closer, there’s a lot more to discover (which I think is true for humans as well…).

And I think that’s also a little bit what I like to do with the with the Polaroids that I paint really small. And they can look nice close or far away, like the 25 together in a kind of expanse and color feeling. And then you come closer and your like “Oh! But they’re all completely different and there’s a little bird on this one!” 

And Cj Henry – Hyper realistic and insanely large.

Oh, and also Karlyn Shahnazarian, I love Karlyn.  She does these dreamscapes, I love how they disappear.  She does a lot of spraying water and then painting with a palette knife.  It’s very dreamy.  She just had a reel that went viral and now she’s got over 30K followers – I’m so proud of her!  She’s the one who got me into Rockwell paints, and now I’m a brand ambassador for them!

And my last one is Brit Chida.  They have all of these beautiful simple illustrations.  My favorite one is the – you can choose either one, which is like work, rest, work, rest. Work, rest or work. Rest.

It resonates so much and so many of their works are so efficient and there’s like one has how long I think it will take, and how long it actually takes.

They’re all so amazing! I’ve seen Brita’s work before, but not the others – thank you for sharing them with me.  Thinking of things you love, what is the piece you’ve made that you love the most; your own favourite painting?

It’s still this tram one that comes to mind

The old tram in Norway. It’s from a while back, I think it’s one of the first paintings when I was like “I painted that?!”.

It marked this transition into proving myself wrong – thinking “I couldn’t paint something like that” – snow and painting something kind of realistic looking, but still very painterly because I don’t necessarily want to paint hyper realism stuff. 

And then this one also feels like a stand out. 

Oh, and the hundred day project that I gave my mom, which has all of 100 splashes. Makes me happy to look at as well.

Those are the ones that stand out. When they feel like they come very much from me and not just. “Oh, this kind of looks like someone else’s work or this looks very much like a class I’ve taken.” Or that it’s a version of someone else’s style. Which is also why I’m kind of proud of these new little mountains that I keep making. These also come really naturally and I feel like they’re not taken from anywhere. They are just mine and that also feels really nice.

But probably the tram. If I had to choose. 

Thank you!  I love how you’re able to so quickly zoom in on what your favourite is. 

In terms of what you’re working on just now, what is the current project – the ‘labor of love’ – that you are super excited about that you want everyone to know about?

Well… it is my first official collection, which is my Polaroid collection, which I believe as of right now has 37 pieces.

About half of them are single ones, because it about surrounding yourself with proof and keep reinforcing to yourself who you are and what you are about. What your values are.  And I think there’s something about proving to yourself that you can do a thing that you’ve been wanting to do. And if that thing for you is buying original art, I wanted to make it really easy to buy original art without me feeling like I’m undervaluing my work.

So the baseline for the pricing is that each Polaroid is €20. And then the larger sets, ten together, plus the mounting and the backing works out at €230.

I made a system that I feel is easy for me to defend, I get paid for my work. You can have a beautiful piece that can be put into an A4 frame, but then you can also buy just one tiny, tiny Polaroid and it can be mounted or not (it’s a €5 difference) and then you can have this somewhere around you and you can be like “I’m someone who buys original art” without maybe having the opportunity to invest hundreds of euros in something. So I really wanted that to be an option as well because I don’t have prints available yet (although I would like to one day).

I wanted to have something at a price point where, for example, for me I would love to support other artists but I don’t really have a salary that warrants that other than prints or calendars or smaller pieces. Or is there a lower price point that I could offer without feeling like I’m sabotaging the market or being like apologetic about being here? 

They will be €30 for the small ones – it’s on a little backing board that’s about postcard size – all alone (no mounting) it will be €25.  So there will be quite a few of those to have a you can also be someone who buys original art set.

And then you can go up a little bit in sizes for sets of three, four, and five, and for sets of nine and ten, which is the slightly more high-ticket ones. Aaaand I’m also available for bigger commissions, for example 25 pieces:

I’m really excited for that. It will be my first time selling from my own website and I do really want to reinforce this start before you’re ready thing and also start where you are with what you have.

What I have is original art. So instead of being like I have to wait until I also have prints and also have this and also have stickers and also have…. whatever it might be I’m starting where I am with what I have, which is original art, and the offering of commissions. 

And then the next part of that is, I know several Skillshare teachers have their classes available as individual courses on their websites. So I was thinking that I could launch that and the Polaroid class is like are you maybe an artist yourself? Would you like to make this yourself instead? I’m all for that if you are Skillshare you can take here. If you’re not, you can buy it as a separate course and then included you would get a one on one with me and we could talk about where to take this further, or my best tips and tricks, or my favorite supplies, or how to apply this to something else that you would like to work on, or a challenge that you have. 

I’m not exactly sure how to do that yet, but I think that would be a really nice thing to move forward with as well. 

Have you decided on the size of the collection that you’re going to launch? 

I think this is the size (37). I was thinking maybe I would add more, but these are the ones I have available now and they’ve kind of sorted through all the ones that I have. And it seems like, if I’m not mistaken I have 14 singles I have 6 trios, 4 quads, 6 sets of five, 4 sets of nine and 3 sets of ten.So 37 all together.

They will be unmounted because you can also choose to have them unmounted in case you’re like, I love these five, but I would love to give one to each of my brothers or something. And then you can choose to have them mounted (which is then easier to ship and reduces the cost a tiny bit).  Or if you have like those fancy glass frames and you’re like, I would just like them to float around in that – it’s a possibility. If not, then the default is that they will be stuck on to this lovely hand-torn backing board.

When are you going to launch the collection – have you settled on a date?

I have… somewhat.

I would like to launch it before my birthday, which is the 9th of May, and the 9th of May is a Monday. I was thinking it might be a good idea to launch it before the weekend just so people have time to think, oh yeah, it’s Saturday, tomorrow I’ll I’ll take a look, which is the 6th of May. So that’s my unofficial deadline. And the real deadline, if it doesn’t happen Friday, if it could happen Saturday or Sunday, that’s also fine because it’s before my birthday on the Monday so that I will have a website while I’m 33 (for some reason that felt like an important deadline).

I’m excited, too. I’m really looking forward to seeing your site when it comes out, because I imagine from what you’ve said, from your email newsletters, and just generally how you approach things that as well as having a lot of interesting information, it’s going to be a piece of art in-and-of-itself. 

So… I love knowing a bit about people’s lives outside of their art.  Could you tell me about a typical day in your life?

I always make my bed.  Making beds is very important. So I flip open the covers (because my mom is like, “you don’t make the bed immediately, because you have to let the warmth of the body that has just been sleeping there escape”). So I remove the duvet, fold it down the bed, but then before I leave for work, I do fold it back in it, put my little diagonal thing – which is just a towel but it looks like a nice bed spread – on the corner. 

And then I do my breakfast smoothie and my coffee. The first sip of coffee has to be done with two hands on the cup because I can’t do anything else like check my phone. So it’s like a miniature mindfulness moment.

I always make the same smoothie, I’ve been drinking it for seven years now and I’m terrified that I will one day get sick of it.

Okay – I have to ask – what’s in this amazing smoothie that you’ve had for seven years and not gotten sick of?

[Laughs] It’s one banana and about 100ml of oats, some frozen berries or mango or whatever is in the freezer – it can have spinach or apple juice, and if I suddenly have kale or orange juice around that’s also fine. Bananas and oats keep me full, and then I can get some leafy greens in there too.

Thanks! And sorry – back to your day.

I ride my bike to work and listen to an audiobook because I can’t seem to sit down with an audiobook. So my bike time is my audiobook time which is really nice, or occasionally I’ll listen to Encanto or other music – depends on how fast I need to go on the bike.

I come into work and then I get told what to do because I usually just have a code. I have the time for the shift and I have the code for where I’ll probably be. And it could be something to do with performing or taking care of someone in the park (Disneyland Paris), meeting our guests, saying hello, and helping people have a magical day.

And I also volunteer a little bit a couple of times a month – I work with a suicide prevention hotline.

When lockdown happened, I went back to Norway for a little while because the park was closed and I felt I’d like to go home and spend time with the family. I heard the ad on the radio –  which I never listened to – are you someone who could talk to someone who doesn’t have anyone to talk to? Yes, I said. 

They gave me training. They just opened a digital version of the physical work so I joined that, which is, I think one of the most life changing, changing me as a human, experiences and I think everyone who is a human who talks to other humans should have this training of how much we don’t really know about anyone we talk to. In choosing kindness and being there to listen, and how important it is to just have someone to talk to. 

Because I’m so lucky – I had a lot of people to talk to, so even just thinking of not having that, for someone to go through something hard on their own, it felt really meaningful. 

So sometimes I do that when I get home from work or I’ll go to the cinema and be with friends or sometimes I’ll go home and face-plant on the bed and eat candy and have a nap.

And sometimes singing at musical theater open mics, on a boat in Paris, on the river. (I do love musical theater. I don’t go to as many shows and concerts as I would like because I forget that they exist and when someone else takes the initiative I’m like “Ah! I would love to go!”)

Or museums! 

I try to remind myself to book things and I’m very good at following other people’s momentum.  If someone takes the initiative I’m really good at then following up. And it’s just I’m sometimes not the one who takes the first initiative.

And then my art kind of takes the time in between, depending on what kind of day it is and how much energy I have left of my energy budget – which I very often talk about with my friends, like, “Oh, I don’t want to take like the rest of your energy budget,” or “ooh, I’m like at the at the bottom of the bucket of the energy budget for today”.  And then I sometimes like to put my earplugs in to at least reduce the sound. 

But I do have a pretty strong daily practice of painting. So even if I don’t paint something important, or spectacular, or something to stretch me and learn something new, I do try to put brush on paper every day. Now I have a 100-day project that I’m on day 70-something of.

And I have these small, little, paintings that I try to paint from something that I’ve either taken a photo of that day or if I haven’t taken a photo I paint from memory. Something that will represent that day, because I think noticing our days, especially if you feel like time’s going by so quickly and we’re always so busy and everything’s just the same – and we’re like “what happened last week? Was this the other day or was it two years ago? I don’t know…”  I think slowing it down just enough to be like, “I wonder what will make today special?  What was something that happened today that I could paint a representative of that will make me remember, even if it’s just a moment?”

So, for example, yesterday I painted a big red curly hair because that was representative of work, and then a gray headband and a red strawberry that I put on my head because I had a frozen strawberry on it (which I’ve never done before). Even in my crying and feeling sorry for myself, I was also like, “this is so silly. I’m sitting here with my headband and a strawberry eating a cookie…” 

Oh, and I sometimes water plants!

Thank you for sharing your day.  Can you tell me, if I really knew you I’d know that…

…gratitude is a really big part of my life.

In college I noticed this negativity bias that all humans have – it’s much easier to remember bad things because we try to protect ourselves from poisonous berries and being eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger. So remembering which berries are poisonous is much more important than remembering the 50 berries that are okay to eat. Which our brains haven’t let go of apparently, the way I’ve understood it. 

So I was like, “I’m going to try this.” I think it was Oprah talking about a gratitude journal and writing three things she was grateful for. And I was like “gratitude sounds a bit too fluffy to me. I’m just going to call it a positivity book. And it will just be things that make me smile or things that I noticed and things that stood out.”

And with that focus, I was like “I have to write this out tonight so I better pay attention and walk around noticing what things make me happy. What things I notice, what things make me smile.” And the first night, I was just practicing thinking about the things I like and I wrote 11 pages, just one liners –  

“I like melted cheese. I like the color blue. I like when multiple cars of the same color are after each other in a parking lot.”  It’s so…small but it really works and I think that hasn’t really let go. So I have now I have a gratitude app that I use that I fill out every night.

So I have just one question left… what is your favourite joke:

Okay, you say “knock, knock” 

Knock, knock

Come in!

[Laughing] I love it!

[Laughing] That’s one of my favorite ones because it’s so stupid. I like it because it totally upsets the expectation.

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Elise’s collection and website will be launching on May 6th 2022 – you can find it at https://www.eliseaabakkenstudios.com/ and you can see more of Elise’s daily art life on Instagram.

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If you enjoyed this artist interview you might enjoy my later interviews with

• Françoise Blayac,
• Vicky Jeffery,
• Simone Michiels
• Taylor Carroll and
• Jen Dixon