About Roxanne
Roxanne L. P. Hjorth is a self-taught abstract watercolor artist based in Switzerland. She began her artistic practice in watercolour through classes in Traditional Sumi-e Japanese Brush Painting. Over the past 25 years, she has developed a deep relationship with this medium and explored textile and surface design collaborations.
Hjorth has maintained her artist practice alongside a decade-long career in the tech industry, both in Silicon Valley and in Zürich, Switzerland. As a designer, researcher, and strategist specializing in sociotechnical interaction and human centered design, her technical expertise and curiosity inspires her work.
“Roxanne Louise Pinto Hjorth's watercolor work explores a delicate space between landscape abstraction and the imaginary cartography of terrain. Through washes, gradations, and transparencies, she composes floating territories where forms suggest mountains, valleys, or bodies of water without ever freezing them in place. Her subtle layers overlap like geological strata, creating a silent depth that evokes both the memory of a place and its possible invention. This tension between poetic observation and mental construction lends her works a meditative dimension, where the gaze wanders freely, guided by the rhythms of color and the breath of the paper.”
– François Lavaud, Gallery manager at Marivaud Studio
About the work
My practice examines mutual influence between people, tools, and media — and how that relationship changes over time. I work in abstract watercolor on paper, focusing on biomorphic shapes. I design my painting techniques to suit the subject. To retain the integrity of spontaneous creation, my work does not use masking fluid or tape within the images. Each stroke builds on and adapts to the previous.
I use both European pigments in tubes and East-Asian watercolor pigments in trays, on cold-pressed fine-grain 100% cotton paper in varying sizes and formats. Pieces range in size from miniatures to larger wall art, and selected works are available as limited edition signed prints, color-corrected in person with Zürich-based fine art printer Remo Eyer, or as signed and embossed originals.
Artistic philosophy
My painting practice embodies my philosophy of crossing boundaries. Blending the structure and focus of Sumi-e with the expressiveness and innovation of western watercolour helps me practice seeing the creation of the work as part of the work. Since residing in Switzerland, western watercolor techniques and methods have led to my color-rich, highly-technical practice of today.
My paintings address themes of exploration, mapping, navigation of internal worlds. I aim to create visual interfaces that situate the viewer in alternate dimensions for better understanding of the here and now, and the systems that move us through time. The latest instantiation of my painting practice stems from contemplating the unconscious. I have been inspired by the spontaneous spiritual paintings of Hilma Af Klimt, Georgia O’Keefe, and Mark Adams.
