Olle Norås

“When I begin a painting and face the blank paper, it is as if the image already exists beneath the surface, it simply needs to be coaxed out in the right way.”

Originally trained as a blacksmith, Olle Norås gradually changed course during his studies at Steneby School of Craft and Design, shifting from iron and steel to watercolour and gouache. His abstract and distinctive works on paper often retain a relief-like three-dimensionality; the image itself is sometimes cut out, leaving the flat surface behind. Teeming organic forms and meticulous order coexist in a visual world that reveals new layers the longer one looks.

Motivation:

The artist Olle Norås approaches organic materials and forms through an exploratory artistic process. Through painting, sculpture, and experiments with texture and surface, he creates works that reflect on humanity’s relationship with nature and the slow processes that shape our surrounding world.

Themes of time, memory, and transformation recur in his map-like images, where scale and meaning continuously shift, from slowly growing lichens to fragments of geological patterns or distant shimmering galaxy clusters. In this oscillation between the microscopic and the cosmic, between closeness and distance, new perceptions arise.

For an artistic practice that, through methodical precision and visionary care, transforms the overlooked into visually charged experiences, Olle Norås is awarded the 2025 Scholarship from the Sten A Olsson Foundation for Research and Culture.