This artist’s colourful paintings show nature as a path back to ourselves | Zarina Hagen

At Women in Arts Network, Spring Through My Eyes gave us the opportunity to discover artists whose work celebrates renewal in unique and deeply personal ways. Zarina Hagen’s paintings stood out for their joyful use of colour, transforming familiar landscapes into vibrant expressions of light, harmony, and optimism.

Based in Norway, Zarina is a painter, photographer, and printmaker whose creative practice is rooted in a deep appreciation for nature and the emotional power of colour.

Drawing on her background in health and colour consultancy, she sees colour not simply as a visual element, but as a source of vitality, balance, and connection. Every painting reflects her belief that art has the ability to uplift, inspire, and bring positive energy into people’s lives.

Inspired by Norway’s fjords, forests, changing seasons, and the landscapes she encounters through travel, Zarina paints places as they feel rather than exactly as they appear. Brilliant blues, glowing pinks, luminous yellows, and vibrant greens become her visual language, allowing her to express atmosphere, emotion, and the quiet beauty she experiences in the natural world.

Instead of recreating reality, she invites viewers to step into landscapes shaped by memory, intuition, and light.

What makes Zarina’s work especially distinctive is her belief in the importance of beauty and optimism. At a time when much contemporary art often explores darker themes, she chooses to celebrate colour, joy, and the restorative power of nature. Her paintings encourage us to pause, reconnect with the world around us, and experience the sense of hope that can be found in both the landscape and within ourselves.

Now, let’s get to know Zarina Hagen through our conversation about colour, nature, intuition, and creating art that celebrates the beauty of life.

Art Zarina Hagen, a Norwegian painter, photographer, and printmaker, uses pastels, oils, acrylics, and watercolours, blending her health background and colour consultant with a deep appreciation for nature. She employs luminous, vibrant hues and explores the frequency of colour as emotional energy, infusing her art with joy and positivity.

Her artworks radiate vitality and hope, inviting viewers to connect with the beauty and healing potential of existence. Zarina Hagen aims to spread joy through her art and has had several exhibitions, including “Power of Nature” “Sun, Life, Light” at Sagene Samfunnshus in February 2025 and 2026.

Collours has profound emotional power, they create psychological and physiological responses in the human brain. Colours acts as powerful emotional triggers, they comunicate across cultures. Red brings energy as warm colour, blue calms as cool colour, orange is assosiated with happiness and pleasure. Colours bring vitality, harmony and reconnection to nature.

Q3. Your landscapes often capture the feeling of a place more than its appearance. What draws you to that approach?

Several of my paintings are inspired by photos and pictures I took in nature, travel, landscapes, Oslo, fjord. palette is a “language of the soul,” there is mystic in Nature which transcend the canvas.

Q4. In paintings like Oslo Harbour in Colours and Fjord, Norway, atmosphere feels just as important as the landscape. Is that something you consciously create?

I agree, Love to create special atmosphere, here in colours. Painting has a form, colours are emotional

Q5. Your palette is bold and expressive. How do you know when colour should reflect reality and when it should follow feeling?

I Love Colurs, Balance of Colours is important in painting. Feelings, intuition and inner self as well.

I feel deeply grateful to have received such thoughtful feedback from the curator. I’d love to share these beautiful words about my work:

I feel deeply grateful to have received such thoughtful feedback from the curator. I’d love to share these beautiful words about my work:

As a curator, I look for the ‘soul’ behind the technique, and your focus on vitality and harmony comes through with such sincerity. You don’t just paint nature you seem to choreograph it. You have a way of layering tones so that the light feels like it is coming from behind the canvas, particularly in Light, Roses, Window. The fluid compositions show a sophisticated understanding of organic movement. Your shapes aren’t static they breathe.”

Q6. You work across several mediums. What does each one allow you to do with colour?

Q7. Joy and optimism are central to your work. Why do you think those qualities still matter in art today?

Contemporary art can be dister, yes. Black, brown, beige, white… are quiet trendy in Norway. Lack of colour is depressing. Just think how green colour in Nature and sun elevate us in summer. My aim and wish is to provide vitality, positive Energy, harmony ansd reconnection to Nature through my Art. The market is currently seeking exactly what I provide vitality, harmony and reconnection to nature.

Q8. Why do you think people continue to seek out landscapes and nature, even in an increasingly digital world?

Humanity have been living with Nature and colours during many thousands of years’ We are extinction of millions of years of Life on Earth. That is why reconnection with Nature is vitally important, Nature is a part of us. We are created and creators. Just think how green colour in Nature, blue sky and sun elevate us in summer.

Q9. Has your understanding of success changed as your work has reached collectors in different countries?

Yes, it is It is a beautiful feeling of expansion. I wish to spread joy, vitality and beauty through my art to different countries and embrace the world.

Q10. What advice would you give artists who are still finding their own creative voice?

Stay true to your intuition and be Loyal to your inner self. Never give up.

As we wrapped our conversation with Zarina, we realised that her paintings aren’t really about colour alone. They’re about the feeling of standing in nature and allowing it to change something within us. A landscape can become more than a place. It can become a memory, a source of calm, or a reminder that beauty still exists, even in the busiest moments of life.

That is what makes Zarina’s work so uplifting. Rather than painting nature exactly as she sees it, she paints the emotions it awakens. Every luminous blue, radiant yellow, vibrant green, and glowing pink is carefully chosen to express a feeling, inviting viewers to experience the landscape through both the heart and the eye.

There is also something refreshing about the optimism that runs through her practice. While much contemporary art often explores uncertainty or tension, Zarina chooses to focus on light, harmony, and the restorative power of the natural world.

Her paintings remind us that joy and beauty are not simple ideas they are powerful experiences that can reconnect us with ourselves and with the world around us.

For collectors and art lovers, Zarina’s work offers more than colourful landscapes. It brings warmth, energy, and a sense of renewal into a space. The paintings continue to reveal themselves over time, encouraging moments of pause and reflection while filling everyday life with colour and hope.

Perhaps that is what stayed with us most after speaking with Zarina. Nature doesn’t just surround us. When we truly allow ourselves to experience it, it has the power to transform the way we see the world and ourselves.

Follow Zarina Hagen through the links below and explore more of her vibrant artistic practice.