A Brookfield resident has been recognized for her work in a form of Norwegian folk painting that dates back hundreds of years.
Mari Solberg Smith earned an honorable mention award for her art at the National Norwegian-American Folk Art Exhibition in July and two first-place ribbons at the Wisconsin Rosemalers’ Syttende Mai competition in May.
Smith said she felt “delight” in reaction to her awards.
“Persistence pays off. Growth happens a little at a time. To be recognized for the skill, that people appreciate the work that goes into the art, it’s just wonderful,” she told the Landmark.
Smith has been painting for more than a decade in the style known as rosemaling. The style typically involves oil paints and features floral elements and fine lines applied to walls or bowls, chairs, boxes and other wooden items.
“It developed from the Baroque and Rococo art that was coming out of the European continent in the 1700s and 1800s,” Smith said.
She said the art form came about after guild-sponsored artists were trained in those styles and brought their techniques back to the valleys of Norway, where they trained local residents, who incorporated them into their existing styles of folk art.
Smith said she’s had a lifelong enjoyment of art, which led her to pick up rosemaling from her mother-in-law, inheriting her supplies after her death. She took her first class in 2015.
“I spent that entire first class learning how to use oil paints and not really learning rosemaling, so I took the class again to learn how to do rosemaling this time, and then I took the class again to improve my stroke work. Persistence has paid off,” she said. “Over the course of the last 11 years, I have worked and improved my painting.”
Smith, who is the librarian and education chair of the Illinois Norsk Rosemalers Association, said she began entering exhibitions and competitions in 2018 as a way to seek feedback on her creations.
“There are no other teachers in Illinois. I have to go outside the state in order to get teachers to come into Illinois for in-person classes or to teach on Zoom,” she said. “For me to take classes and get critique and instruction, I need to go out of state. There are other groups around the country, especially up in Wisconsin, that I can participate in classes and have teachers tell me what I’m doing right and wrong in my art.”
She joined the group that same year as a board member to help it continue in the face of “serious doubts” about its future, she said.
“We weren’t having very many classes because it was a small group. We would have two or three classes a year, locally in-person, and it was still a small group. There were maybe 50 people on the membership, 30 people participating and 10 of us doing the work,” she said.
During the COVID-19 lockdowns, Smith said she had to turn to teachers from out of state to Zoom in and hold classes, which seemingly revitalized the group.
“Everybody has a camera, so if they want to show what they’re doing to the teacher, they just have to maneuver their camera so it looks at their artwork or hold their artwork up in front of them,” she said. “On Zoom, you can spotlight the teacher so that her camera was showing her work on her desktop really well, and you could follow along even better than you could if you were standing and looking over her shoulder in a classroom.”
Despite her high level of achievement in the rosemaling community, Smith said she most enjoys freely sharing her art with others.
“There’s pleasure in creating a work of art for others to enjoy. I give my art to family and friends as presents. I’m not prolific enough to sell [my art],” she said. “Being able to share my personal art with other people, and also as a former educator, I really enjoy sharing the skills so that people can learn how to do it for themselves.”
If rosemaling has piqued your interest, Smith said the INRA is hosting several events in the upcoming months, including sales events in September at Vasa Park in South Elgin and at the Cottages in the Woods in Geneva as well as a beginner’s class on Halloween at Geneva’s Good Templar Park.
