Toril Kojan
Painter, poet, art therapist, and educator
Images / Kristian Jøraandstad Words / Charlie Jarvis
Between roles as an art therapist, educator, and founding editor for an art magazine, Toril Kojan has always painted. Now, her focus is her art, what she calls “the food for the soul”. Toril Kojan has had an astonishingly varied life. Before making a commitment to her art in the early nineties, the visual artist, painter, and poet had already enjoyed a diverse career as an air hostess, advertising copywriter, and product manager at the Norwegian Design Council. She even had time to write a screenplay for the award-winning film producer, John M. Jacobsen. Yet, it was the art magazine she founded and edited for fifteen years, Kunst for Alle (‘Art for All’), that gives her most pride. "I had long been surrounded by artists and, at that time in the nineties, I was attending many art courses myself," Toril tells us. "It was then that I noticed there was no serious art magazine for amateurs in 162
Localfolk Norway
Norway. So, I decided to leave my role in advertising and set up Kunst for Alle. I edited it by myself until 2010 and it had ten thousand subscribers for a time. Later, I sold it to Fineart and, now called Kunst, it’s the largest art magazine in the Nordics—I am really proud of that!" And rightly so. But now, Toril has put most of her commercial work aside. “I’m so happy I can be working on my own art and my own paintings and not have to deal with lots of other things!”, she tells us, laughing. “I’ve been in this studio now for about seven or eight years. It’s a good, big space where I feel I can express myself. Because, for me, expression is painting, more or less.” Toril’s painting works in the tension between abstraction and figuration. Across her work, enigmatic characters and creatures stand among complex, beguiling scenes led by colour. “My paintings come Facing Image / Red sets the tune, Acrylic on canvas, 120x80cm
