Painting removes me from the logic of the everyday world. The image created is guided by its own reality. Our environment is rapidly changing. Although I think the flight of peoples from their roots, my paintings are an image of seeing what cannot be seen. Many elements in my paintings are alien species to the image space. Plants, people and even art have become refugees in our time. I try to make visible what I feel is real. Internal and external take shape in an interlocking way.

The world is full of energy and overwhelming beauty – and terror. Fear and sadness over loss. I gratefully admire the ability of all living things to transform and to sustain hope. At the same time, the awareness of the destruction of our sole provider is now part of the imagery of my paintings.

-Kristiina Uusitalo

Since the start of painter Kristiina Uusitalo’s (b.1959) career at the turn of the 1980s, the main themes of her production have included experiencing and depicting nature as a stage for human inner life, but also as an image of climate change. Over the years, Uusitalo has reinvented herself in her art, in both its pictorial and message content. She has, nevertheless, retained her characteristically expressive style. She received the Finnish State Art Prize in 2008. Her public works include the altar painting in Tainionkoski Church in Imatra (1997), the mural Valon varassa (Borne by Light, 2013) in the entrance hall of Malmi Hospital and well as works implemented on the premises of the Vietnam-Finland International School in Ho Chi Minh Cityssä (2019), Aalto University (2023) and Laine Hospital in Kuopio (2024). Her works are in all the main Finnish public and private collections.