I was listening to a radio programme the other day where they were discussing Finnish expressionist painter Ellen Thesleff, who lived and worked during the latter part of the 1800’s and early 1900’s. In a time when female artists weren’t acknowledged to the same extent as their male peers, to put it mildly, her bold work made her a groundbreaking figure. She’s widely considered one of the leading Finnish modernist painters of our time.
It reminded me once more of how culturally robbed we’ve been throughout history because female artists have been underrepresented and misrepresented – how the female perspective has been lost. So many women have been unable to share stories and experience unique to them.
Experiences such as, for instance, living with, and surviving, breast cancer. An ordeal which Astrid Swan has experienced first-hand, and one which she depicts so honestly and beautifully on her latest album From the Bed and Beyond.
Musically and visually her work exudes a vulnerable and morbid romanticism. But Astrid Swan’s language is realistic and completrly raw, almost brutal at times, as she tells her story of facing one’s own mortality and, ultimately, finding one’s own strength.
From The Bed & Beyond is out today on Soliti.
In Between Songs 