Souvenirs from 2025

a year in sketches

Dear friends,

I love a yearly round up, do you? Maybe not the best of type of roundup, but to sit a little and to think about a year. To make conclusions or just appreciate the year, you know.. be grateful and all. See what to take into the next year. This time in between of Christmas and New Year always feels so special. A moment to realign, to settle, to be a bit ambitious (or not at all) for the next year. To take out that new diary… to dream and imagine.

My look back at 2025 through the secret personal sketchbooks. :)

B SIDE type of sketches. In small notebooks, scraps of paper, making marks while talking on the phone or for the sake of making marks. They somehow are the most honest, immediate and vulnerable. Not for work, not for any particular purpose, just because there is a need for them to come out.

Let’s start!

Beginning of the year was so chaotic and busy and inspiring, I drew all December and January, it was incredible. I moved to Helsinki on the 2nd of January. I’m am doing my MA now and was able to go on an exchange to Aalto School of Art for a semester. It was quite cold when I arrived and very beautiful. I spent my time visiting cafes, museums, going for short runs and admiring the pines and snow.

Studies started and it turned out to be extremely intense until the end of the semester. I sneaked in personal drawing, so I could remember the place. Whenever I make even the smallest drawing it has a power of bringing me back to the place and time it was made, the smells, the thoughts, the atmosphere.

Helsinki is a spectacular city. By this time in March I figured out my favourite places to be, things to do when I had time on the weekends. I would just walk and walk for hours, looking at buildings, be drawing places and then buying new pencils and trying to find a colour to explain the day.

March is also my birthday month. My parents and sister visited. Then my partner came to visit. It was so wonderful. Showing my new and temporary home town was so fun, seeing all the best parts again and again.

Erika took me on a coffee and vintage marimekko shopping trip.

March is a good month.

I would run to Lautasaari, or take a city bike. The path took me through the small islands, with small bridges, through pines and overlooking the Baltic Sea. It was still pretty cold. It was my favorite path, small islands connected by bridges and at the end there were two great coffee shops in Lautasaari. One in an old building with a beautiful garden. I often would cycle past into the city, more Baltic Sea, more beautiful views.

I finally finished reading All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami, the first spread is the quote from that book. I think I was also dreaming about things then, but now I can’t remember my dreams.

May was a delight. Spring, bike rides, yoga, drawing outside, second hand shopping, school work, terraces, coffees outside, saunas. Ron has visited me. We were cycling the whole weekend, going from one bun place to another, sampling and trying to find the best pastry in Helsinki. And spotting dogs. I was wrapping up my time in Helsinki. I was exhausted, I have never produced so much diverse work, I was so SO inspired. I mean.. I can’t explain how grateful I am for this opportunity, as a person and as a creative. It was truly special. The air was like a creative fertilizer for me, this place, the people <3 just love love love for it all.

TIME was so slow and suddenly I blinked and it was time to go home again! I packed up and went to see my parents in Riga before moving back to Norway. We took a road trip to see my sister, I was like a teenager in the back of the car, getting time to draw and overlay different colours.

And then, suddenly I was home! Back with my partner in our cute apartment. It was like I have never left but I was kind of a different person. I missed our life together. I also missed nature and mountains. The next day after I came back I went up Ulriken, our closest mountain. It was incomprehensibly hard to hike up after half a year of flatness. And all for what? A fog, all consuming. I was standing there, looking into the distance as a bird appeared from nowhere, flew around and disappeared into the fog again. So happy to be home. :)

July was long, hot, rainy, busy with work (my product side with prints sold locally) and pencil sketches. Erika and Ella came to visit, I met them both in Helsinki, both connected to a surface pattern class. We thrift shopped in Bergen, ate local fish cakes and went for hikes. They loved the city so much, it also reignited spark for Bergen in me too.

Meeting friends, drawing in the sun, going for hikes, restarting on my Norwegian learning journey again. Happy to be back. :)

My partner and I went to Greece for the first time ever, it was magical. A week of ocean, museums, delicious food. We had a wonderful time, looking at little fish in the ocean and warming up our bones and souls before Norwegian winter.

And I was back at school, last year of my masters!

Back to MA, feels incredible, each new day, something new, a new world and a new opportunity. Growth is quick and steep. Myriam and Suse and I went to Paris and then Lyon for a few days. Yearly trip to recharge creative batteries, soak up design inspiration.

Only pencil sketches from this trip, I then made them into a RISO zine.

These months I don’t have much energy to sketch. But I have made a lot of side projects and publications. Studies get busier and busier with each day.

My parents are visiting and we are doing a lot of things together, like getting almost stuck on top of a mountain and going thrift shopping. At some point as part of my masters project I talked to them about their idea of belonging, heritage etc. I take some notes, I also drew my grandparents summer house near Homiel, Belarus. Built by my grandparents and great grandad. I spent each summer there as a kid. And my mum tells me about her grandmother and her memories of the time with her in the village. My masters project theme is all about belonging and heritage and of course illustration.

Bergens best still life illustrator and a pisces girl Sia, kindly took me along on a little trip to collect seaweed. I made a couple of sketches. It is a busy month work wise and school too. I pickled the seaweed, it is delicious and funky.

December flies by. With deadlines and darkness it feels that days stick together.

It’s my name day on the 23rd and my partner and I have ice cream for dinner. I went for Earl Grey, it’s perfect. We have just turned a corner and days are getting longer.

Now I am sitting at home, it has snowed and it is spectacular outside.

And I hope you enjoyed this post. I hope you had a nice year. I hope you feel light and inspired and hopeful. And I wish you the most wonderful year ahead, my friends.