Thordis Adalsteinsdottir

Thordis Adalsteinsdottir was born in Reykjavik, Iceland, receiving a BFA from the Icelandic Academy of Arts In 1999 and a MFA from the School of Visual Arts, NY in 2003.

The paintings of Thordis Adalsteinsdottir present emotionally charged moments in a weightless manner. Her personable narratives are often hilariously sinister and casually violent.Influences range from Egon Schiele to Elizabeth Peyton, geometric abstraction, Op art, minimalism, expressionism, and outsider art. Adalsteinsdottir paints in an ultra flat manner with carefully nursed details, interrupted by repetitive freehand patterns and unexpected pops of eccentric textures. Even though her paintings achieve extremely cohesive rhythms in composition, Adalsteinsdottir does not work from sketches, and this raw spontaneity clashes wonderfully with the refinement of her controlled execution.