frederikke tu | About the Artist

Fine Art . Design & Animation .

Frederikke Tu is an autodidact Danish artist, designer and animator currently living on Møn, Denmark. For the past 17 years she has also been the founder and creative force behind Ojolie.com, using her watercolor paintings and animation to tell stories that are fundamental to everyone’s lives. Frederikke started painting with watercolors as a child and her long history with the medium has influenced the way she works with color and light in other mediums, including oil and acrylics.

Artist’s Statement

“What makes watercolors so unique is their luminescent quality – in a way it is like painting with light. There is less room for hesitation and the medium requires a different approach, which has formed my artistic practice. During the many years I lived in Asia I learned to flow like water around obstacles. It helps you navigate traffic as much as life in a less controlling way. In Japanese Sumi-e ink painting, the artist must mentally prepare and place each stroke without hesitation. A thorough understanding of the medium and the processes free you as the control comes from mastery. Letting go allows you to find new paths, but without mastery your journey might be quite short.

I recently returned to working with another first love, wet or green wood, combining it with watercolour and ink. Working in wet wood has some of the same challenges as working with watercolour. You know the medium has a life of its own, but an understanding of how it behaves can free you to break the rules. In these new pieces I focus on wood that would normally be discarded, like wood shavings or wood veneer that has buckled due to moisture. Watercolour and ink allows the nature of the wood to step forward, wood shavings or wood veneer providing a medium not unlike paper that can be sculpted and shaped when wet. ”

“I draw my themes from how I experience and connect with the world and nature, which influences me on a more abstract and imaginative level. I am very sensitive to the harmony of color in nature and this intuitively guides my use of color in my work, which in my new pieces are heavily influenced by my new home, Møn. ”