Again

Painting Series

2026

research Exhibition  

At Mustarinda Residency
Open Studio Event
Big Studio

Material: Aquarelle, Oil Pastels, Wax pencil

Picture Credit: Liina Aalto- Steal and Vilma Dahlman

This body of work was made over one month in residency at Mustarinda, painting outdoors as much as possible , close to the forest, the yard, the garden. I worked in wax pencil, aquarelle, and oil pastel, often across several paintings at once, moving between techniques and switching mediums frequently.

The process was rooted in looking rather than planning: keeping my eyes open, resisting the urge to look down at the paper, letting the hand follow perception rather than intention. In this looking, I found a pull toward abstraction, taking the shapes I saw and narrating them, reworking them until they carried something of nature's own continuity, its refusal to stay still. Late summer was a constant presence, shifting weather, the life of the garden, a season in transition.

I don't think the paintings arrive at meaning so much as work their way toward it — through covering, hiding, layering; through leaving some things visible and losing others underneath. I worked with less self-imposed limitation, paying attention to my own recurring gestures and rituals rather than editing them out, letting the compositions simplify rather than complicate. Much of the work stays close to the surface: flat, frontal, built through texture and repeated pattern. I move between what I saw and what I dreamed, without much separating the two.

To paint, for me, is to give something my full time and attention. A detail, a moment, held long enough, doesn't stay small; it becomes a pocket of time that enlarges past itself.