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The starting point for my exhibition at Galleria Joella is personal. In the past, I have wanted my works to relate to some current, societal theme. Now I approach painting in a new way, where the subjects emerge from my own life. One of the inspirations for my new works has been the Finnish word kuolinpesä. The word contains both kuolema (death) and pesä (nest), which point in different directions: kuolema toward something unknown, emptiness, an end to everything – pesä toward warmth, home, and safety.
Both of my parents died in the spring of 2022. My father died completely unexpectedly; my mother was in hospice care for almost two months. During that spring, after their passing, I photographed source material for my paintings in their townhouse yard – my former home – both in the front and back gardens. The theme of the paintings and drawings is the garden, an intimate outdoor space shaped, bounded, and controlled by humans. Now a place where no one tends the plants or walks anymore. In the paintings, I also depict suburban thickets and clusters of tree trunks. At the heart of the exhibition are abstract, expressive works that deal with the themes of beginning, growth, ending, and continuity on an everyday, small scale.
My exhibition at Galleria Joella is the third and final part of my body of work on the theme of kuolinpesä. The first part was shown at B-Galleria in Turku (6.7.–23.7.2023), and the second part was exhibited at Galleria Napa in Rovaniemi (13.1.–6.2.2024).
My work has been supported by the Serlachius Residency.