Meditations
2022 - 2023
My thoughts take the form of patterns, they are born and grow like plants that take over paper. It is never a line that seeks the form, I do not approach drawing through outlines but rather it is the set of repetitions that create shapes and movements, almost abstract structures and forms. The drawings grow, and repeat the same pattern for as long as they want.
I make my drawings like ancient cave paintings: from familiar observations of nature that leave traces in my memory. Finnish has traditionally lived in a close relationship with nature. With these microscopic observations of nature, I want to return to that. The forest is the place to meditate, pick berries and mushrooms, or simply walk or sit quietly. When I moved to Tucumán, for a while I lost contact with this thing that, ultimately, seems to be part of my identity. Silently drawing these patterns gave me that space for meditation.
My way of working has a certain relationship with automatic drawing. I give up control and simply watch what happens on paper, without judgment or expectations about what might happen. The process is more about how the pen, microfiber, or pencil feels on the paper. The results have a certain family resemblance to botanical illustrations, with their clean backgrounds and simple shapes.
In Meditations on the Forest I and II, I combine all the patterns and shapes that I have previously drawn as individual samples. I made them in a different physical and mental space, which can be observed in the atmosphere of the drawing. Some of the drawings are named after the particular species that inspired them or according to ideas that ran through me while creating them. Metsässä puiden havut varisevat (In the forest the needles fall from the trees) I drew for the first time in Finland, contemplating the branch of a tree I saw, witnessing the constant metamorphosis of nature, seeing how it grows and changes, like a tree It loses its leaves but then grows new ones; It is born, grows, dies and is born again.
Nature constantly changes and grows just like us and the patterns on paper.
