“I make gentle art and stationery for your soft heart,” reads Ivna Lins’s Instagram bio, where she has amassed over 46K followers over the past few years. Lins is a visual artist, whose designs feature bright colours, cartoon faces, and encouraging messages.
Lins describes her work by saying that it is centred on “simple moments with an open ending about everyday life. Like noticing which plants are growing in the garden in each season, foods that I like to cook from scratch or local ingredients from my area.” The small things in life are what she finds most inspiring. A lot of her work is done digitally, but she likes to use different techniques and keep herself open to using any medium for her projects.
This month, Lins has her work on display at Jream Café, in an exhibition called The Soft Side Inside. On May 2 a vernissage took place, featuring 12 different works with a story connected to each one. Lins explains that these stories “Tell you how it came to be and give my perspective and my point of view of how I see that moment, and how it was shaped to be a piece of art.”
Lins studied biology before becoming an illustrator. She was interested in different artistic practices, like music and filmmaking. It wasn’t until she became sick with multiple chronic illnesses that she reassessed what worked for her. “It kind of forced me to pay attention to what was happening inside of me. That’s why I play with the words, with the ‘soft side inside.’ I was kind of ignoring the signs that my body was giving me,” she explains. This slowing down really helped her gain perspective and hone what kind of work she wants to put out there. “It kind of helped me shape where I wanted my art to be and what I wanted to show to the world,” she adds.
Lins’ love of filmmaking mixed with her knowledge of biology are incorporated into her art. She loves to draw plants and animals, which comes from her love of biology. And she gets to use the artistic eye she developed from filmmaking at the same time, so she combines many parts of herself with each work she draws.
New to the area
Lins has really been enjoying getting to know what Huntingdon has to offer. She moved here from Montreal a little less than a year ago, with the intention of finding a place to move where she could have a garden. The region charmed her with its community and agriculture, and she says it’s “filling my heart with joy.”
This month’s exhibition is not the first time Lins has collaborated with Jream Café. When owner Jordan Brunette first met her and learned of her illustration skills, they collaborated to make a map of Huntingdon. Brunette tasked Lins with the job of creating a map of the town from her fresh perspective. “I had no idea about anything in the city. But then I started noticing how you have so many cool things, and I started drawing them … It’s so beautiful. There are so many details. The architecture is amazing,” Lins says. She chose twelve spots across Huntingdon to include, and this map can be found on the Jream Café Facebook page.
Lins’s art is available to buy at her website, ivnalins.com. Her work can also currently be found at Jream Café and on her Instagram, @ivnalins.