Step into my world! Join me for an intimate tour of my dream studio in the Copenhagen rooftops. From my inspirational books to my chaotic work tables, pondering chair, and sacred rituals, I'll show you where the magic happens. Discover my favourite tools, my grandfather's pastels, and meet the painting that watches over me. It's a colourful peek behind the curtain of my life as a professional artist. Fancy a look?

My whole life, I've dreamed of having a proper artist studio - somewhere with lots of light and a lovely big space where I could work on huge canvases and leave everything out, not worry about being disturbed, not worry about anybody kind of coming in after me and moving things around, a place where I could just be completely free to express myself however I wanted to. And last year, that dream came true, and now I have a beautiful light-filled studio up in the rooftops of Copenhagen.
Hi everyone, and welcome back to Zuzu's Haus of Cats, the show where I take you behind the scenes of my life as a professional artist. I'm Eli Trier, and today I want to take you on a little tour of my studio.
So here we are in the entrance to my actual studio, and because this is also the entrance to our house, that's why we've got this bookcase here. If Lars has people coming around to play games or something, then this just gives me a little bit of privacy and stops everyone being able to kind of look into the studio, and it also gives me lots of lovely space to have my books.
These are my books, and they are a constant source of inspiration. Some of them are how-to style books. I don't really find those so useful. Every now and again, there's one that's really, really good, but most of the time, they're just inspiration. And sometimes just looking at the spines is enough to inspire me. It's lovely to have them kind of front and centre in the studio, so I can just kind of grab one and pull it down have a look whenever I feel the need.
This is where I sit when I'm doing any kind of computer work. I have to feed the beast. This is the beast. These are her little eyelashes. I also draw here as well, especially if I'm doing a workshop or a Patreon session or something like that. It's quite nice to have the stuff on screen, and then I've got this space here that I can draw on. I can also wheel over one of the work tables as well and really spread out, which is the benefit of having everything on wheels.
I have some essential supplies in these drawers next to me, just kind of stuff that I reach for regularly when I'm drawing - my favourite supplies. And of course, I've got the art cart that I can wheel around as well, which has much more in terms of sketchbooking supplies.
Up here on the wall behind me, I've got sort of like an inspiration wall. I did have to cover some of it up because it's got a lot of rude words on it, but you can get the gist. And this is like a - it's not a cork board, but I use it like a cork board. So stuff goes up, stuff comes back down, and I'm changing it around. Whatever's inspiring me at the time. And I also love having my exhibition posters and things up here as well. It kind of keeps me focused on what it is that I'm trying to achieve and what I'm trying to do with my career trajectory.
I persuaded Lars to put these little picture shelves up for me recently, and they're so good. Oh my god, they're the perfect place for putting wet paintings up to dry. I tend to work on lots of pieces at once, and that means that this small space gets very chaotic very quickly. So it's really great to have somewhere to get them up, kind of off the floor. They're safe up there. They can dry, they can do their thing, and I can kind of rotate stuff as I'm working. Also great for sitting in the pondering chair and gazing at things, analysing kind of what kind of adjustments I want to make, or whatever.
On here at the moment, these are from my Flourishing collection, and they've just come back from a show. They were out in the world, and they just come back, and I haven't put them into storage yet. So it's just lovely to be surrounded by my work and have that colour and joy and vibrancy in the space. I find it really, really inspiring.
This is my guiding principle when it comes to all the work that I make: "Carefully observed, loosely rendered." And what that means is that I want to pay careful attention to the thing that I'm trying to represent. But then when I'm actually rendering, when I'm actually painting and capturing the image, I want to do it really loosely. I don't want to be hunched over the canvas getting super tight. I just want to be splashing the brush around.
And this one as well: "You can tame a wild goose, but you can't make a tame goose wild." And that's just to remind me that the looser I start, the looser I can finish.
I love these big, chunky house painting brushes for doing big canvas. This one, and, oops, this one. This I think is my favourite brush of all time. I think it's just a house painting brush. It's kind of, I don't know, there's something rubbery about it. It's got a little bit of give to it. It's got lovely, stiff bristles, and it's just an absolute joy to paint with. And I use it a lot.
The more weird tools that I like to work with - this is my other favourite thing to paint with, my palette knife. This is just, I like to ice a canvas, like I'm icing a cake. Then we have some - the more messed up my brushes get, the happier I am. I'm not gonna lie, cheapy kids brushes, brushes that have been left in water too long, like they just make such interesting marks. This is another favourite, lovely and - I'm horrible to my brushes. I leave them in water for weeks on end. They're all rotten. They're actually holding up remarkably well all things considered. Yeah, wooden forks, chopsticks, weird stuff, makeup brushes. Makeup brushes are one of my favourite things to paint with as well. They can hold so much paint in those bristles, and they're just lovely and soft and swooshy. Love a swoosh.
I think every artist studio has one of these. I've never used it as an art aid, but I don't think you can call yourself an artist unless you actually have one. These pastels behind here - they're gorgeous. This little pastel box - these were actually my grandfather's. I inherited them along with some paints and some other things from him when he died. And yeah, I just think that box is so gorgeous.
This is where the magic happens. These are my work tables. And one thing I love about the studio is that it's so customisable, which is the benefit of having everything on wheels. I can just move things around to suit whatever kind of work I'm doing at that particular moment. Right now I'm between projects, so it looks super clean and sparkly, but when I'm in the middle of painting, this whole situation is just knee deep in chaos. And I find that super inspiring. When I'm in the middle of a project, like the mess feeds into the work.
But once a project is complete, I really enjoy the sort of the cleansing ritual of scrubbing the paint off the tables and the walls and the floor and putting everything back into this lovely, clean, receptive state, like resetting the room. For some reason, each project's mess is only inspiring for that particular project. And once it's over, it's - it's just no, I need it - I need it white and clean again. It's a really important part of the process for me, the kind of the making a mess and then cleaning it up, and then making a mess and then cleaning it up again. I love it.
All of my major art supplies live in these amazing cupboards, which are built right into the wall of the room under the window. It was actually one of the things that made me want this apartment when we first came to see it. I thought it was just so fucking adorable. All of my paints and mediums and collage materials, everything, it all lives in these cupboards when it's not in use. And then when I'm ready to embark on the next big project, then I will pull everything out and the act of setting the room up for painting is like a sacred ritual for me. It really shifts my mindset and helps me to prepare for the journey ahead, because I work in a very kind of project-based way. I'll build a collection, and I'll work on all of the paintings in the collection simultaneously. Doing this sort of ritualised process helps to stop me from overthinking about any one painting in particular, so I can keep kind of loose and open to the process.
So I also have two tabletop easels as well as the big bugger, and this is what the room will look like when I'm ready to begin work.
This is where I keep all of my equipment for sketchbooking. You can see here I've got coloured pencils and markers of various descriptions, all sorts of different pens. My dip pens are here on the second shelf down. I've got all my inks and liquid watercolours, and in these like weird food dish - I think they're like kids' food dishes to keep food separate - I've got my soft pastels, and then underneath that are my oil pastels. Actually a really nifty storage solution. It's really great for separating out all the colours. And then underneath those I have my tin of pastel pencils and my tin of Colorsoft. I have the full set of both of those.
And then all the way down at the bottom here you can see I've got a mirror, hi, I use that when I'm painting to check the proportions and everything like that. I've got a tripod. Oh, that's my hairdryer for drying things. Also down here, I've got some tubes of acrylic gouache and just - yeah, paper towel, water bottle, handy little scraps.
This is one of my favourite features of the studio. This is what I like to call my pondering chair, and this is where I sit and ponder. My pondering chair is where I sit when I'm contemplating my next move on a painting, when I want to just kind of sit and take it in, absorb what I've done, make decisions about what comes next. I will spend hours just sitting in this chair, staring at a painting, just kind of weighing things up in my mind. I'll get up and I'll try something really, you know, quick, and then I'll sit back down for another half an hour. It's one of the biggest parts of my creative process when I'm actually in the throes of painting.
So the last thing that I want to show you before we wrap things up is this painting. It's one of my favourite, favourite paintings. It's called "I'll watch over you and keep you safe." And it's from my Je Suis Wibbly-Wobbly collection that I did, gosh, a couple of years ago. At some point, he will probably be offered for sale, but right now, he is such a lovely companion to have in the studio, and he watches over me and keeps me safe, just like the name suggests. He's a - he's a dear friend, and I'm so happy to have him here in the studio with me.
And that's my studio. I hope you've enjoyed the tour. Thank you so much for joining me in my studio today. I had so much fun showing you around. It's lovely to be able to share this gorgeous space with all of you. Next week, I'm going to be taking you under the covers of one of my sketchbooks. I can't wait to show you, so make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss that, and I will see you next Thursday. Bye!

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