Spring Salon: Where Community and Art Meet
By Wendy Boakai, BD & Investment Associate
April 23, 2026
The Spring Salon is our way of welcoming the season to the Nordics — bringing together the life science community for an evening of connection and appreciation of art. After a long and cold winter, both in Sweden and across the life science industry, spring arrives with a sense of renewal, energy, and possibility.
To mark the occasion, we will transform our office space into an art gallery, featuring works by an Uppsala and Stockholm based artists, Emma Jelk and Jullianne Jabol. Get to know the talented artists beforehand and experience their work on 28 April at Skeppsbron 10, as we celebrate the arrival of spring.
Emma Jelk - The Depth of Human Experience
Emma’s journey as an artist began in childhood with a love for drawing and creating. At 20, an internship at a tattoo studio deepened her understanding of design, composition, and expression, leading her into digital and concept art influenced by her interest in gaming. Eight years ago, she discovered her passion for painting, marking the beginning of her exploration on canvas. Working primarily with acrylics on linen or cotton canvas, Emma initially chose the medium during maternity leave to avoid using oils and thinners at home. The fast-drying nature of acrylics soon became integral to her layered and intuitive process.
Her work explores what it means to be human, often emerging from both darker emotions and moments of light, balancing curiosity, imagination, vulnerability, and strength. At the core of her work is an exploration of human perception. Emma is fascinated by our ability to feel, imagine, and construct realities — sometimes hopeful, sometimes overwhelming. She emphasizes the importance of recognizing that each person experiences a different version of reality.
Emma describes her creative process being ever-evolving, often sparked by something as simple as a fleeting moment of light or a photograph that reveals new meaning over time. She draws inspiration from the contrasts within us: the changes that come with age, the tension between light and dark, and the resilience we develop over time. Her children also play a significant role in shaping her perspective.
As she explains, “To a child the world is big, filled with possibilities and magic.”
Music and film are also key influences in her art. Cinematic scores, particularly by Hans Zimmer, help transport her into the emotional space needed to create, while film inspires reflection on the contrast between who we aspire to be and how we live our daily lives.
Through her art, Emma seeks to reconnect viewers with themselves and invites the observer to look inward and reflect on their own emotions, desires, and regrets She wants Her work to act as a reminder of what we are, how we are and why. She aims to create a space where people can come closer to their inner truth, even if only for a moment.
Emma has seen how powerful that connection can be. Viewers have shared how her paintings have shifted their perspectives, even igniting a meaningful change in their lives, such as reconnecting with a long-lost family member and rebuilding a relationship. For Emma, this is at the heart of her practice: the belief that art can move us, and that through inner change, we begin to transform the world around us.
Jullianne Jabol - The Poetry of Everyday Life
Jullianne “Jullie” Jabol’s artistic journey also began in childhood, shaped by creative influences from her early years in the Philippines to later life in Sweden. Exploring various mediums, she eventually found her place in oil painting at around fifteen, a practice that remains central to her work today. A pivotal shift came during her university years in Gothenburg, where the pace of city life led her to consciously slow down and observe her surroundings, turning her focus toward people and the quiet individuality within everyday moments.
Jullie’s work is rooted in observation, capturing subtle, often overlooked scenes from daily life. Pieces such as Evening Tram Commute reflect fleeting yet reflective experiences, transforming routine moments into something introspective and calm. Other work, such a “In Pursuit of...” draw from personal memory and cultural context, from everyday labor to vibrant market scenes, offering both familiarity and space for interpretation.
“The scene draws from everyday realities, much like collecting pantburkar in Sweden, people in the Philippines gather and sell scrap materials such as metal and glass bottles to earn money. This connection shaped the piece, grounding it in shared, ordinary forms of labor” Jullie describes.
Jullie works with a combination of acrylic underpainting and layered oil paint, often using an alla prima (wet-on-wet) technique that allows for immediacy and visible brushwork. This painterly approach enhances the expressive quality of her subjects while maintaining a consistent palette that unifies her work. Influenced by artists such as Edward Hopper, as well as her experiences between two cultures, Jullie’s paintings explore stillness, solitude, and the nuances of everyday life. She describes her work growing out of observation, and her process is intuitive and flexible, often starting with reference images that are reworked and combined, then developed on canvas through continuous adjustment until the composition feels complete.
Through her work, Jullie invites viewers into moments of familiarity, wonder, and quiet curiosity. Rather than conveying a fixed message, her paintings create space for reflection, encouraging each viewer to interpret and feel the work in their own way.