Introduction

“The deepest thing I know is that I am living and dying at once, and my conviction is to report that dialogue.”
Stanley Kunitz

When I’m painting, I feel like I can step into a region that is not a place. For me, a painting is an image of seeing what I can’t see. I try to give visible form to something that I feel is real. My subjects as if flash across my mind’s field of vision. Several of them knock on my door, and some I let in. In making my chosen images visible I reveal myself. In a painting our inner and outer worlds are interwoven truths so that we experience them with our whole bodies.

For a long time, I painted a manifestation of the energy and the moment of insightgenerated by the dazzling beauty of nature. In recent years, I have felt like I have reached the outer limits of innocence. The forces of nature and the illusion of movement now have a new role in my paintings. The world is filled with power and overwhelming beauty, but also with the dread caused by the devastating change in our environment. We are never far from suffering, but we look the other way. That is why it feels imperative now to paint this image of disintegration.

Kristiina Uusitalo