Ines Marström on Painting After a five-year Pause

Five years is a long time to step away from painting. Long enough for habits to disappear, materials to age, and certainty to become unfamiliar. When Ines Marström returned to the studio, she did not begin with a plan. She began with a canvas and the uncomfortable feeling of starting again.

People often imagine an artist's return as a moment of confidence. The reality is usually quieter than that. The first weeks were spent mixing colours, stretching surfaces, and learning how to trust decisions that once felt instinctive. Nothing dramatic happened. The work simply resumed.

Ines describes the pause not as a break from painting, but as a different way of looking. During those years she travelled, read, and spent long periods away from exhibition spaces altogether. The distance changed her relationship with the work. When she returned, she found herself paying attention to different things.

The paintings became slower. Fewer elements remained on the surface. Colours softened. What once felt important gradually disappeared, leaving more room for silence.

Returning to uncertainty

One of the surprises of returning was discovering how much uncertainty remained useful. Experience does not remove doubt. It simply changes the way you live with it.

Many of the new works began without sketches or clear outcomes. Ines allowed the paintings to develop gradually, responding to what appeared rather than what had been planned. The process felt less like directing and more like listening.

That openness can be difficult. It asks the artist to remain patient while the work finds its own pace. Yet it is often where the most unexpected discoveries occur.

A long pause does not erase a practice. It reveals which parts of it truly matter.

Interview · March 2026

Before leaving the studio, we asked whether the five years felt lost. Ines shook her head. "The paintings stopped," she said, "but the looking never did." The new work seems to carry that lesson in every surface.