Barbro Raen Thomassen

Evoking something found in nature, something organic or a pulsating body part, Barbro Raen Thomassen’s sculpture shows how the large is found in the small. Her artistic process is reductive, with hard granite being chiselled away to reveal the shape of the work. There is a potential for something else in a seemingly inanimate rock. When you think about it, there are many things in our natural surroundings that originate from something tiny, such as seeds. It is this phenomenon that Thomassen explores – the small nuclei that develop into plants, vegetation, and enormous trees and that are vital to our existence. Thomassen homes in on nature and finds the smallest yet most powerful building blocks around us. “I love to be surprised by the beauty of a seed and then magnify it, sculpt it in stone, make the invisible visible,” she says. “Under a magnifying glass, seeds reveal interesting furrows and structural and tactile patterns.” Her sculptures are declarations of love to the smallest and largest among us. RG