Studio
I live in the middle of nature in an old house where one of the rooms is my atelier. It’s important to me that I get to paint in peace and quiet. My paintings are quite small in size, which is why I have managed to combine my painting activity with the pleasure to be at home. As I am also an entrepreneur and my office is at my fingertips, I do not wait for inspiration, but paint humbly and diligently every day. There are also a lot of preparatory work and tasks, as well as matters related to being an entrepreneur.
The lighting of the studio is an important factor, and since it is a dark long winter in Finland, I have ensured natural lighting with the help of different lamps.
In my studio I feel cozy, a little bohemian disarray is probably part of the deal… 😉
New artworks
Recently, I have painted mainly with oil colours on high-quality thick paper. I always prepare the work with chalk and, finally, usually head over the painting with a still varnish, but not all the paintings. I mainly paint people, portraits, intuitively. I want the painting to tell my story as an artist and have to be recognized as in my style. Painting people is demanding, sensitive, inspiring, touching.
“I built myself a suit of armor from the wings of a blue butterfly”
This painting is about a person who has made the wings of a blue butterfly into armor for himself. The image is full of symbolism and metaphors, weak in relation to powerful, fragile in relation to durable, tied in a relationship of free… The cat reflects independence and independence. I had read about a young man who had been ostracized because of his sexual orientation, but he learned to love himself for who he was and to accept himself boldly. However, the road to freedom had been long and hard.
“Soldier’s bride”
This painting tells about the war in Ukraine. I guess there are/needs no more words…
Inspirations
In addition to being an artist, I’ve had another career in mental health and substance abuse work as a cognitive therapist. Each person of us has his/hers own history, each of us is vulnerable, sometimes lost and close to losing hope altogether. With my paintings, I want to tell you about hope and compassion, finding your own way and daring to live. In concrete terms, my life came to a standstill when I received an aggressive breast cancer diagnosis in 2019. I decided not to give up. While I’m telling other people’s stories, I’m telling and painting my own story too. I hope it’s conveyed by my works. – Humanity, authenticity and presence.
Different techniques have different challenges to work with and the working rhythm is different too. Painting with oil colors is slow, the colors dry slowly. On the other hand, it gives me time to think, to look, to work on the painting. And the slowness, in my opinion, fits our busy world perfectly as a counterbalance.
More about me and my life story: www.hannamaaritjauhiainen.com
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