Maija Lassila

For me painting is an intuitive practice that gets its fuel from my everyday observations in the world around me, and from ideas developed over long time scales as different threads in my mind. My home landscapes in the south of Finland and in the Finnish archipelago are constant inspirations for developing new work. Painting is a curious relation to the world that can touch upon various transcendental questions, symbols, and playfulness which often are hidden in our every day, rationalized society. I mix and layer different materials open-mindedly, such as charcoal, pastels, aquarelle, tempera, and oil paint, creating movements on the canvas of the plenty and the vastness, a flourishing existence and space beyond. For me, painting is a slow process. Throughout my different series of paintings, I continue to explore questions of belonging, connection, time, self/other, and existence as part of the web of life. My paintings depict entanglements of the living world and remind the viewer of existence as both ephemeral and continuing.

http://www.maijalassila.com/

Maija Lassila graduated from Finland’s Academy of Fine Arts (Uniarts Helsinki) in 2018 with an MFA degree. Since then she has been active in developing her art practice and exhibiting her work in various galleries in Finland. By her other education, Lassila is finishing her Ph.D. in social sciences, on the themes of political ecology and human-environmental relations. More theoretical questions from the field of science translate to her artistic work in various ways.