Easy on the Foot

Jockum Nordström

Working with combinations of watercolor, gouache, graphite, and collage, Jockum Nordström unites the innocence of northern European folk art—rendered with a rustic, child-like hand—with depictions of a fanciful, slightly askew world where the naked body and sex abound, as well as references to maritime lore. To create his collages, Nordström arranges cut-out shapes from his drawings to make action-filled scenes, resulting in tableaux of characters who appear mismatched in scale and origin. He exhibits the same mix of unpretentious materials and scrupulous detail in other artistic projects he undertakes, including furniture and carpet design, children book illustration (including the popular Swedish series Sailor and Pekka), album covers, architectural models, and animated films.