I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the riverbed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.
—-Sleeping in the Forest by Mary Oliver
Camilla Engström’s paintings feel like a return—a quiet surrender to the rhythms of nature. Her dreamlike landscapes do not merely depict the land; they embody its movement, its warmth, its breathing stillness. Like Oliver’s poetry, Engström’s work suggests a deep attunement to nature, where color, light, and form merge into something both intimate and expansive.
Inspired by the landscapes surrounding Los Angeles—the rolling hills, the desert’s quiet vastness, the shifting glow of the Pacific—her work transforms familiar terrain into something deeply felt rather than precisely rendered. The golden hues of dusk, the soft blue of early morning light, and the earthy warmth of canyon trails seep into her compositions. Trees sway in quiet rhythm, rivers ripple like whispered reflections, and mountains pulse with an inner glow, as if absorbing and radiating the sun’s final light.
Alongside her paintings, Engström will be presenting a group of ceramic terracotta vessels. These sculptural forms, rooted in ancient traditions, bring a tactile presence to her exploration of nature. Earthy and organic, they echo the landscapes she paints—vessels that seem shaped by wind, sun, and time itself. Their hand-formed surfaces and warm, earthen tones ground her work in something physical, connecting the ephemeral beauty of her paintings to the tangible weight of clay.
Her brushwork is instinctive, her colors unconfined, mirroring the fluidity of nature itself. The land in her paintings does not sit still; it moves, breathes, and hums with quiet energy. Like Oliver’s verse, Engström’s work is an invitation—not to escape, but to pause, to absorb, to feel the world around us more deeply.
In her paintings and ceramics, Los Angeles is not just a city but a threshold to the vastness beyond. The desert, the ocean, the mountains—they are all part of her wondrous place, waiting to welcome us back.
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Camilla Engström is a self-taught artist who transitioned from fashion to painting, gaining international recognition for her vibrant and emotive works. She has exhibited widely, with recent solo exhibitions including ART021: Camilla Engström, Carl Kostyál, Shanghai (2024); Ro, Carl Kostyál, London (2024); Valley of the Moon, Over the Influence, Paris (2023); Emerging Passages, Over the Influence, Hong Kong (2021); and Mantle, König Galerie, Berlin (2022). In 2025, she will present her seventh solo exhibition with Carl Kostyál at NOMAD, St. Moritz.
Her work has been featured in group exhibitions such as Dog Days of Summer at Timothy Taylor, New York (2024); Beyond The Visible at Albertz Benda, Los Angeles (2024); Painters of Modern Life I at Carl Kostyál, Ibiza (2023); and Rise and Shine at Over the Influence, Hong Kong (2020).
