Fanny Brodar Born in Norway in 1971, I grew up in New York watching Sesame Street and drawing on the floor of my bedroom, creating imaginary friends and made-up worlds that helped me deal with traumatic times in the real one.
Dreaming of becoming a children’s book illustrator, I earned a BFA in illustration from the Art Institute of Boston, but in the years that followed, my life took a different turn, including a long sojourn in Montana hanging out with cowboys and climbing mountains, and I stopped painting for almost two decades. Five years ago, having relocated to coastal Maine, I was given a secondhand easel, and rediscovered an urge to paint. In early 2020, as the pandemic closed in, I found an escape from the isolation and darkness by painting a series of bright canvases depicting a euphoric tapestry, an otherworldly and magical place. In many ways, I was reverting back to being a child drawing in my room.
