Behind the print: "Phantom Sofa"
- lucy w
- 15 hours ago
- 5 min read
Bess Frimodig has spent her life traveling light, yet her current obsession is wonderfully weighty: the elusive, comforting fantasy of soft seating. Her new prints, including "Phantom Sofa" and "Oh Santa Give Me Soft Seating for Christmas", are part of her ongoing "Furniture Dreaming" series. They are studies in colour, memory, and desire. Bess shares the inspiration behind her flying sofas, from Japanese printmaking techniques and Rothko's transcendent colours to her armchair-traveling Latin teacher.
I have lived in eight different countries since I was seven years old. Moving around forces a non-attachment to objects, which is a form of liberation as well as pragmatism. Buying bulky pieces of furniture is a no. Besides, living in Japan and India, I discovered the floor to be a kind of extended, flexible living space to sit on, draw, write, and sleep.
Still, lately I have developed an obsession with soft seating – a fantasy of sinking into a vast sofa filled with pillows, as an embrace. Or to lean backwards towards the cushioned support of a red armchair with my morning coffee. Instead, I start each morning perched on a hard chair, having my breakfast on a fold-out table.
Why did you decide to make "Phantom Sofa"?
Living in central London in a small top-floor flat does not allow a large sofa. It wouldn't even get through the door openings. I revert to what I did as a small child: imagining soft seating flying in the air over the vast communal garden outside my flat, drawing the furniture of my desire in the dark, tracing its outlines. Then it is almost real, but a Phantom Sofa nevertheless. In the end, I don't mind. Drawing is magic. It gives form to dreams.
What techniques did you use to make it?
Working with a puzzle approach on aluminium drypoint and sometimes etching/intaglio, I cut out the pieces to move them around into different scenarios on paper. I overprint with roll-ups of colour fields on lino, working with several layers of subtle tones and mika (ground mother of pearl powder) – a Japanese ukiyo-e print technique to build a sky room, a room which moves around in the world.
Working out the colour takes almost the longest, with an approach of almost glazing with pure pigments, inspired by a residency at the Rothko foundation and two weeks of having the privilege to be up close and personal with his transcendent canvases.
Why is did you choose that style of sofa for "Phantom Sofa"?
Italian, 1970s, upholstered in velvet and filled with down. Surely, such a sofa could fly.
You’ve done some watercolours of armchairs as well - is exploring ideas in watercolour something you like to do as part of your practice?
Watercolours start my prints, sketching in place. Venice gave me the current armchairs. I stayed in a convent – a rather severe place – but as hard as the religious order was, they still had armchairs, tinted green as the canals outside. Even nuns seek the embrace of upholstered furniture.
Were there any challenges that came up while making these prints?
Customary to traditional ways of working with colour, building up the range working from light to dark, I started with the black outline of the sofa and armchair, then overprinted with canary yellow and dusty pink. It makes the furniture disappear, becoming uncanny, but is unreliable as sometimes the black pushed through or disappears completely.
How and why did you decide on the colours for "Phantom Sofa"?
Dusty pink and canary yellow were the colours of Gustav Adolf – the 18th-century Swedish king known for his love and support of theatre and music, especially the troubadour Mikael Bellman. My father sang Bellman's songs celebrating summer days and wine drinking. The colours carry me back to a time where technology did not dominate most of our waking hours, but conversation and music did.
The lime green is a gift of India—a colour I return to too often, remembering a place where parakeets trailed through the sky leaving green lines of light, and where wild peacocks walked the street in early morning.
If I sit in a soft armchair, I glimpse all these moments that construct a life in full colour.
Will you continue to explore these ideas in print?
"Phantom Sofa" and "Oh Santa Give Me Soft Seating for Christmas" are part of a "Furniture Dreaming" series. At times it involves underwater seating swimming with whales, or drifting with clouds. Writing this blog, being prompted by your questions, makes me realise that I have been working on a furniture dreaming series for a long time.
Desiring soft seating is becoming a longing for being settled, but also a fear of being weighed down by belongings and an end to my nomadic life.
Changing my relationship to heavy – but soft – furniture could do with a reframe. My Latin teacher, Mr Cervin, a small, roly-poly man of great wit, soft like a cushion, spoke lovingly at great length about Rome. He must have visited the city many times. When the class suggested we would travel there for the school trip and have Mr Cervin guide us, bringing history alive in buildings and writings, he said: "But I have never been to Rome. I only travel in my armchair." Wise man. I too will travel in an armchair – but I'm not quite willing to give up my cat days of transnational wandering just yet.
"Phantom Sofa" is in our current Prints for Presents exhibition in the Greenwich Printmakers gallery, and Bess's wonderful work is available on our online shop and in the gallery all year round. For more information, see her artist's page and her website. Instagram: @bessfrimodig
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