The artist

I’m Mattias Wirf, a visual artist based in Örebro, Sweden. I work primarily with traditional media, and BaskinInk is a place where I collect my ink drawings, share experiments with different inks and tools, and write about the craft of drawing.

Ink has always fascinated me with its precision, its unpredictability, and the way a simple line can carry so much expression. Sometimes the work is careful and planned, other times it grows from quick sketches and spontaneous marks. Drawing with ink forces a certain honesty. Once a line is on paper, it stays there.

Through ink, I explore character, atmosphere, and the emotional weight that can emerge from line, contrast, and restraint. I hope you enjoy the work and find something here that inspires you to draw, experiment, and look more closely.

My other creative work (including photography, painting, and development projects) lives elsewhere.

Background

Over the years, I’ve balanced life as an artist with a professional career in web development. I went to art school in the 1990s, worked as an artist for a period, and later found my way into the IT world during the dot-com era. Since then, I’ve continued to move between those two fields but sometimes separately, sometimes in ways that inform one another.

I was born in 1975 and grew up in Boxholm, where my interest in art started early. In the early 1990s, I moved to Örebro to study art, and after various turns elsewhere, I eventually returned. Today I live and work in Örebro with my wife and our two daughters. My wife is also an artist, and art has remained a constant thread throughout my life.

Outside the studio, I’m also interested in history, photography, fountain pens, and the culture of correspondence. Interests that naturally connect to this site and to my love of ink as both an artistic and everyday medium.