12 WOMEN – 12 MONTHS
PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN
A series of portraits, one each month, presenting twelve exceptionnel women in their creative environment of work and passion, all experts in their own field.
Discover these remarkable personalities and their startling answers to the famous ‘Le questionnaire de Proust’ !
photographe Jonas Ingerstedt
N° 12 : Amanda Wärff
“The Graphic designer”
Amanda with her sharp creative eye, intense curiosity and imaginative mind is our twelfth and last portrait!
As a graphic designer and exceptional typographer, Amanda navigates between these many skills with remarkable depth and insight where she approaches her visual compositions with her core design principles of free form and mouvement to breathe life into her designs.
Within several different disciplines, such as corporate identity, book covers, logos and product packages, Amanda’s creative process is all about embracing multiple compositions to build up unique visual layouts. Her deep love of typography combined with her use of space and line, her understanding of color and form and modernist aesthetics allows her to play and reinvent endlessly.
She is also a master of the negative white space, which she makes use of to bring balance to a layout, allowing the eye to rest and to flow through, as a sort of structured fluidity.
Just as the notorious graphic designer Saul Bass said :
« Interesting things are born when the creative impulse is cultivated by curiosity, freedom and structure ».
Amanda has attended the Rhode Island School of Design and lives and works in between Stockholm, Sweden and Losne in Bourgogne, France. She is currently working on a design project based on the heritage of the renowned Swedish author, Astrid Lindgren. Amanda is also the creator of the Charlotte Bialas logo !
What is your favorite occupation ?
To live everyday life and seek meaning in the present moment
What would you change if you could ?
Everything
If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be ?
Amelia Earhart, Meryl Streep or Uluru (Ayers Rock in Northern Territory in Australia)

What is your current state of mind ?
Find structured fluidity and embrace happiness

N° 11 : MARTINA MUNTZING
“The Artist”
Martina, with her distinct philosophical mind, exceptional artistic mastery and irresistible green eyes is our eleventh portrait.
As a painter and draughtsman, and as one of the most celebrated artists in the contemporary Scandinavian scene, Martina’s paintings touch on something both intimate and distant, both sacred and profane where the real subject is the parenthesis that constitutes the existence between birth and death.
Martina’s paintings go beyond the physical figure of the subject, exploring the psychological dimension of the person’s mind and emotions, capturing a palpable stillness, like a fateful, subconscious premonition. As if the painting has brought time to a halt.
Almost all the subjects Martina chooses to represent tell a part of herself. They are close to home, focusing on immediate family; children growing up, loved ones disappearing, the hardship of adulthood etc
Each work is patiently executed with time-consuming precision and meticulous details. As a contrast, within the paint-blotched walls of her vast atelier, Martina surrounds herself with a deliberate disorder. Piles of stacked books, reams of papers, discarded painting materials, empty food boxes and used teabags scattered over the floor, as if she wanted to liberate herself from her surroundings to fully be able to concentrate on her work.
As Francis Bacon once said :
« I think chaos may be a spur to create order and to cohabit amongst memories and wounds ».
Martina is based in Stockholm, and her work is represented in the collection of The Modern Museum of Stockholm, amongst others.
What is your most outstanding character trait ?
I am kind
What is your idea of perfect happiness ?
To rest from the ego

What is the most extravagant thing you have ever experienced ?
The chest of Bryan Ferry
Which talent would you most like to have ?
To be able to fly

Which flower would you like to be ?
Anemone
Who are your favorite artists ?
Hans Holbein, Lucian Freud, David Hockney, Ingres

N° 10 : TINOU LE JOLY SÉNOVILLE
“The Colorist”
Tinou, with her poetic mind, lively curiosity and sense of childlike wonder is our tenth portrait.
As an illustrator and artist navigating between different creative territories, Tinou’s work is as varied as her creative sources of inspiration. Her delicately poetic and magical world is a play of light where the colors are vibrant, the lines are sharp and the shapes are dancing.
From fashion to children’s books and from textile to communication, it is by browsing through Tinou’s artwork that you realize the multiplicity and diversity of her creative disciplines, where her chromatic palette, refined line drawings and complex compositions are astonishing. Amongst her multiple skills, Tinou favours the technique of « decoupage » using gouache painted on cut-out tissue paper, reconciling the fragile and harmonious balance between form and color.
As Tinou herself say’s : ” The gesture of cutting, unites painting, color and line, finding the fluidity of the brush by drawing with a pair of simple scissors. ”
Tinou has worked with selected institutions worldwide such as Comedie Française, Amnesty International and Museo Del Prado just to mention a few. She has also worked for many prestigious brands such as Swarovski, Dior and Louis Vuitton.
Who are your favorite writers ?
Classics, Kessel, Camus, Prévert, Vian, Cendrars, Kundera, Hemingway, Herman Hess, Charlotte Delbo, Grace Paley, Thomas Mann, Spinoza, Colette, Alice Zeniter… and many other crime novel authors
N° 9 : SISSEL WIBOM
“The Portraitist”
Sissel, with her force of expression, her extreme sensitivity and her sharp sense of detail is our ninth portrait.
A painter and portraitist by profession and a remarkable ceramist by nature, Sissel navigates between these many skills with striking precision and rare vitality.
Sissel deliberately uses traditional means while painting, and builds portraits of an intense reality : the line is flawless, precise and refined, in a representation without embellishment and at the service of the brush.
Sissel’s paintings sometimes captures its model even more objectively than a photograph. Exploring her subjects beyond themselves, she manages to create through her paintings a singular relationship of intimacy.
As Sissel herself says:
“ When two completely unknown people walk into a room, cross the threshold, seek a moment to talk, share an instant and, cross paths, we are suddenly touched by the fact that the other exists.”
This reflection confirms what is going on between the model and the painter. An intense bond, a touching, personal and humanly vibrant intimacy. A sort of forced telescoping of two subjectivities brought together around the painting.
Sissel lives and works between Sweden and France where she carries out both public and private orders. She is represented, among others, in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture, the Royal Theater and the State Council for the Arts and in several private collections in Sweden.
What is your most outstanding character trait ?
My sense for details
What is your idea of perfect happiness ?
Watch your children laugh



Which bird would you like to be ?
An Albatross
What is your greatest fear ?
Being powerless

N° 8 : MELANIE SCARCIGLIA
“The Publisher”
Mélanie with her genuinely altruistic nature, charismatic persona and striking determination is our eighth portrait.
As co-founder of the acclaimed art book publishing house,Three Star Books, Melanie operates with a fearless ease between world famous artists, notorious collectors and renowned museum curators and art galleries, dedicated to bringing to light her passion for her artist’s books.
Three Star books, founded in 2007 with her partner in life, the illustrious Christophe Boutin, is publishing artist’s books in limited editions with the finest contemporary artists, such as Maurizio Cattelan, John Baldessari, Sylvie Fleury and Cyprien Gaillard just to mention a few. Together, they are providing books in multiple forms that are artworks themselves – from handmade and lusciously tactile to abstract, sculptural and monumental.
A wildly varied collection of inventive and spectacular work that challenges expectations. Publications that strike a perfect balance between experimental ways of book-making, respect of the content and attention to printing quality and sometimes also a powerful study between two and three dimensional forms.
As Francis bacon said in his essays :
“Books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”
Three Star books are definitely to be chewed and digested !
Based in Paris, where they have their office and studio, which doubles as an exhibition space, Mélanie and Christophe are also involved in numerous art fairs and workshops around the world.
Which bird would you like to be ?
A hummingbird because it goes very very fast and it’s the only one that can fly backwards
What is your greatest fear ?
The depression

If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be ?
A flower
