Collection: Jonas Bergström

Bergström grew up in a small coastal town in northern Sweden, where long, dark winters were balanced by summers where the sun barely set — a contrast he says shaped his relationship with colour long before he ever thought of himself as an artist. He studied furniture design in Stockholm before drifting into painting, and still approaches a canvas the way he once approached a piece of furniture: thinking about balance, proportion, and how weight is distributed across a surface, even when the result is loose and expressive rather than structured. He paints quickly and physically, often working on several canvases at once so he can move between them while paint is still wet, letting energy from one piece bleed into the next. He rarely plans a composition in advance, preferring to let the first few marks dictate everything that follows. "I spent years being trained to make things sensible," he says. "Painting is where I finally get to not be."