OBLIVION – Sinikka Eirola

Rain colors the nature-dominated landscape, while in another place, paint changes its form. Nature generates new colors. At the same time, the brush glides across the surface, sometimes playing with the sun and allowing the paint to dry. Occasionally, the paint decides where it wants to go. The gauzy, partially overlapping color layers on the painting surface slowly drip, creating the feeling that the painting is slowly washing away. Glowing colors and bright reflections in the layers transport the painting into unusual environments. The works balance between a sense of stillness and slow motion.

The visual appearance of the painting is a sum of distinct events and moments. The painting process is intensely physical—akin to an outburst—where intuition acts as the messenger of the rapid events. The paint splashes, glides energetically, recedes, and drips, with movements growing more subtle and slow as the work progresses. After the final brushstroke, the visible scene continues its journey in the symbiosis of the viewer’s gaze and imagination, which each observer experiences from their own perspective.

A painter living and working in Paavola, Sinikka Eirola explores in her expressive works how the abandoned marks left by humans transform when overtaken by nature. The paintings’ powerful emotional charge takes the work to the borders between representational and abstract imagery. The paintings are created with oil paints on canvas.

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