Emma Larsson
Emma Larsson (a.k.a. @zebrakadebra) is a Stockholm-based artist and illustrator. Her work strikes the balance between colourful dreamscape and inarticulable melancholy. Emma has evolved her practice to include expressive and organic watercolors, alongside paintings created with oil and acrylic. She describes her work as an ongoing exploration without rules and conventions, continually generating new forms, patterns and themes. Emma has collaborated with brands and agencies including Rachel Comey, Show Studio, and Winsor & Newton.
Emma Larsson was born in Gothenburg, Sweden in 1977. Since her teenage years, Emma has had her own art studio. Even though she studied art, she didn’t get a higher art education because she started to have a big family. She considers herself self-taught.
Now that her children are getting older, her full-time commitment is to her Art. Also renowned on Instagram as @zebrakadebra, she has an impressive following of over 160K followers from all over the world.
Larsson’s watercolors, paintings, collages and sculptures are in constant flow. She describes her creative process as the synergy between the artist, the material and an unknown presence, that she calls “force”. She is not analytical. Emma’s paintings are purely intuitive, they source from pleasure and freedom. She starts with a blank paper and follows the flow. In her spare time, she walks in the virgin forests surrounding the city she lives in, Stockholm. She finds most of her inspiration in nature’s shapes, colours and patterns, leading to abstract and moving forms in her paintings.
Emma Larsson’s work has been exhibited in Sweden, Denmark, UK, and now the USA. She has done numerous collaborations in different mediums with high-profiled brands such as H&M/COS, SOHO House London, Rahel Comey, Artpieces, ShowStudio (Nick Night and Bex Cassie), Martimore House London, Anamika Khanna and more. Larsson and her artworks have also been featured in Harper’s Bazaar Magazine, WeTransfer/WePresent, Woman’s Health Magazine USA, REVS Magazine, Chor Data Magazine USA and more.
“I’m a tireless explorer. If I become too comfortable and feel I know too much of a subject, I get bored. What I am constantly seeking for needs to be unknown to me. Creating my art is about playing and exploring freely. If I am asked to describe my work, I can only come up with words such as: liquid, energy, shapes, rhythms, playful, nature’s wonders, curiosity, contemplation, poetry, freedom, meaning, longing, intuition.”