Artist 32: Marius Pålerud

Welcome to Marius! Norse legend and fantastic illustrator. Marius returns to these shores from Norway to bring us his unique exciting style. Fresh and stylish his illustrations clean your visual palette and contain both simplicity and complexity weaving many elements together yet presenting them as one visually pleasing image. His work rewards you for looking, with the initial impression of the image being a different flavour than the sum of its parts. He says himself his work is surreal but it also can be a visual oxymoron. both happy and sad, composed from dark and vibrant colours with light and dark themes combining. His work is such a treat and its complexity is backed up by serious style and presentation. Wonderful Marius certainly is the real deal! Read about him here.


Who are you:

My name is Marius. I grew up in Norway but decided to move to England to study illustration at University College Falmouth in 2006. After three years in beautiful Cornwall I went back to Norway to earn a bit of money before moving back to England in December, this time to Brighton.

What do you do:

I work as a freelance illustrator. Since coming to Brighton I have been spending my time harvesting clients and contacts. For ages it didn’t really go anywhere but this summer things have started to look a bit brighter, I’ve started receiving a bit of paid work, as well as getting some of my work in a new, local, Artist book and print shop called ‘L M N O P’.

How did you start:

Like many other illustrators and creatives I started from an early age with a love for drawing and painting. I always knew that I would end up doing something creative but I didn’t know exactly what. When I found out about illustration I instantly knew that it was the way to go. I’d always played around with the idea of studying in England and when there weren’t any schools that really caught my attention back home, I decided on Falmouth in Cornwall.

A Personal statement about you or your work: 

Brightly coloured and rather surreal I would say. My images are often playful in the use of colour, texture and technique; I have a use anything and everything approach to my work. I’m not sure if this is good or bad, but it seems to work more often than not.  I really appreciate when a piece has a hand drawn quality and even though I use the computer a lot I always strive to keep this quality in my work. You can also find a certain juxtaposition in my work. I have had people say to me that what they first think is an illustration from a children’s book is, on closer inspection, is not fit for that at all!

The emotions a piece of work can generate for the viewer is something that I think is very important. I have been especially focusing on this during my project, ‘Dreams on paper’. In the project I illustrate dreams that people (this can be you) send in to me. I started ‘Dreams on Paper’ just before the summer and have had dreams coming in from all over the world. In August I showed some of the work at a music/art festival in Oslo, Norway.