Santa France, the multimedia artist illustrating a futuristic interior frenzy

Santa France’s work is a futuristic frenzy of illustration. A Latvian multimedia artist, her recent series Interior explores innovative modern spaces in violet and blue hues.

Each of Santa’s illustrated interiors are built using Blender, an open source 3D graphics and animation software. “Usually I get excited about modelling a certain object and then build a composition around it,” the illustrator explains. “The Interior series portrays various isometric mock-ups of rooms incorporating a minimal amount of elements that merely point out the function of the particular structure. I wanted to practice the use of a fixed set by maintaining a constant camera angle and using the same base cube for each room I created.”

Inspired by 80s and 90s interior design magazine and technology adverts, Santa additionally gathers reference images of soviet visual culture. “Another big inspiration is doll houses and other doll accessories – things that look realistic, yet upon a closer inspection are very monolithic and non-functional,” she tells It’s Nice That. Each of these references he gathers into a moodboard. “This year’s folder contains images portraying things such as colourful insect shells, antique dolls of dogs, futuristic bathroom, house-plants, office cubicles and Japanese fashion ads”.

The colour palette for Santa’s pieces are influenced by a recent “kind of ‘blue period’, to be more precise, a #979AFF period,” she explains. “At first I used this colour for lighting every scene I was modelling and somehow I gradually stopped using any other colour all. I enjoy the cold, pale and gloomy vibe it provides, the result reminds me of the dim light of Eastern-European winter which I’m currently experiencing.”