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 Mary 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.
https://www.makeroom.la/room-/camilla-engstrom/
