Photo: Marie Tamanova
Why painting.
The answer is of course different for everyone.
For me however, there is no greater thing. No meduim, no other form of art has managed to truly capture me like paintings do.
Standing face to face with another world, and when it truly resonates with oneself. The mind makes room for the soul, as through sight, ones surrounding mearly melt away. Ones breath grows longer and slower, blinking rarely if not ever. Hearing the sound of the work. Feeling the work beyond its frame.
It is this feeling that I crave, not just in consumption but in creation too. Transporting another human into seeing through my eyes, feeling another world, feeling another's world.
To me painting has the potential to be the greatest form of expression, especially when words are not enough.
About me.
I am a 22 year-old from Helsinki, Finland. I am an oil painter based out New York City.
I left Savannah at 15 to finish highschool in Finland. I got my own apartment and learned to live alone, this is truly when painting became more than just a cool trick I did a lot as a child. It became my words, my conversations. Painting was always in my life growing up around artists, but in Finland it became the air I breathed. I spent my afternoons in the former homes of Finnish artists and collectors like the Didrichsen's and Gallen-Kallela Museum. Sitting in these spaces, I dreamt of a future where a young artist would wander the halls of my old home. In awe at the works on the walls.
Once I graduated and a brief stint in Finlands complusory military service I moved to Amsterdam. There I learned a lot despite rarely showing up to university due to poor health. The greatest thing I learned was a degree in humanities and the life I was living was not for me. So I dropped out and moved to New York City with only 300$, all with one purpose in mind.
I was made for creating.
That's my greatest lesson.
