Hanne Margaretha Biedilæ is a Norwegian visual artist, painter, and ceramicist based in Fredrikstad. Her distinctive work interrogates the ways in which we relate to ourselves, each other, and with nature—and it’s gaining attention across the world.
I have always been fascinated by emotion and by how we connect with each other. What’s happening when we are talking to each other, or when we meet each other? Often, we meet ourselves in a moment or place in life and something happens inside us.
I am a visual artist, painter, and ceramicist with a highly philosophical approach to my art. My richly coloured, tactile, sensuous work plays with and explores the ideas of social consciousness, the encounter with the other, and the ways that emotions mediate our relationships with ourselves and with nature. The expression can be both figurativ and abstract.
Probably the main concept that I approach in my work is the feminine universe, as well as the surrounding assumptions of eternal femininity, youth, and the feminine as gender. As a result, women figures appear across my oeuvre, in both my ceramic sculptures and in my paintings, where they often seem to emerge from expressive landscapes.
I studied ceramics in Denmark in my twenties. In the years between 2006 and true 2015 I were working in and managing different galleries as well as being a part of an arts and crafts center in the old town of Fredrikstad, Norway. The pressures of commercial art became a little too much after many years with a lot of working, multiple exhibitions and workshops. I started to feel sick with the idea of having to make yet another red plate. It felt like I just were feeding the market with what they wanted to have and I forgot what I wanted to express. I felt an artist really just needs to be true to themselves, to be as honest as they can be and it was time for me to develop in another direction with my art.
Since 2016, I have been working in my new studio near by Fredrikstad City, an hour south of Oslo. I have also been studied visual arts, painting in Oslo. I have found new stability and artistic freedom. I’m finding the voice that expresses what’s meaningful for me. If someone else likes it as well, that’s great—but that’s not the most important thing for me anymore.
Sometimes I struggle to accept my own style, and the way I approach colours and technique. But ultimately I always love that struggle and it reminds me of being true to my inner voice and my way of expression.
The last months I have exhibited my work in virtual exhibitions organized by galleries in Milan, Fuerteventura, London, sold my sculptures to USA and I have been invited to be featured in two different books of contemporary European art that will be on sale and sent out to museums, collectors and galleries across the continent by 2022. I will also be represented internationally by a gallery in Madrid and have my work exhibited in their upcoming exhibitions and international art fairs, like Luxembourg Art Fair in April. I have been featured in magazine like this and more will come during this spring.
It have been a great opportunity to show my work to a wider audience. Ultimately, I don’t want to tell people my opinions, but to capture ideas and present them. That way, my audience can engage with those ideas and make their own mind up about them.
I love to work on large canvas like this painting called ‘’Place of your dreams’’, size 260 cm width and 215 cm high. I believe it is on the path to the goal or pursuit of your dreams that you develop as a human being and I hope I never stop dreaming or set new goals.
Hanne Margaretha Biedilæ
Web: www.studiohmb.no | Instagram: @studiohmb | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Studiohmb