Wednesday Update 3

We are taking further the painting we presented last week. More undergrowth is cropping up in the foreground, preventing the viewer from gaining a clearer access into the landscape: that's how one sees things in Lapland this particular time of the year. In a any case, these are the only precious weeks when you can see a bit through the patches of forest into the distance at all. At other times there is just too many leaves, too much snow on the trees or just not enough light. We have experienced how, suddenly your neighbour's house or a bridge you forgot it was there, pops up through a web of bare branches and naked tree trunks.

We moved through the first week and a half working on the painting quite swiftly. But then at some point the momentum that was pushing us forward was lost -something not unusual in the process of painting- and we encountered in front of us a vegetation that was becoming somehow stylized and lifeless. Raisa had the idea of moving the canvas from the wall onto the floor and so our physical posture in relation to the surface changed. This brought a fresh breeze to the painting. The rhythm of marks denoting branches on the top part of the painting was painted in this way, infusing the work with a new quality and direction. 

Below a work to farewell an artist, art teacher and friend, Liisa Palosaari, in her trip relocating in South-East Finland after four decades in Kittilä. Liisa fostered the creativity and interest for the arts in many children and encouraged Raisa with her painting from an early age. The work was created in turns by Raisa and Misha, placing one vertical line each at the time, as a kind of a dialogue.

Still in progress, 135 x 115 cm, oil on canvas

For Liisa, 30 x 20 cm, acrylic on paper