3.3.2022 - 8.5.2022

Tamara Piilola: Tree is a Miracle

For her solo exhibition at Vintti in Kunsthalle Seinäjoki, Tamara Piilola has painted living beings called trees and their habitats. Large-scale oil paintings offer absorbing moments in a world of colours, depths and shapes. The subject of Piilola’s paintings is classic and seemingly very simple and clear. In her exhibition, the artist reflects on the fact that a painting has the ability to show things from a different perspective. A painting can be used to express something that is hard to put into words – give voice to a tree.

Wood is a material considered as an economic good, which, before being utilized, may have lived for many human ages and given shelter to thousands of organisms and beings. It has produced oxygen, purified water, filtered toxins from the soil, stabilised the microclimate of its habitat and bound carbon dioxide. Trees affect tens of thousands of the species that live around them and form a forest with them.

“While there is no way I can reach out to reproduce the true essence of a tree or forest, I can try to tell you something about their grace, unexpectedness, endless variations and adaptability.”

The works in the exhibition are mainly new, prepared for this exhibition and inspired by the exhibition space. Piilola’s paintings of trees are unashamedly sublime. The trees in them are breathtaking entities, trees of pristine forests growing wild. This sublimeness fits naturally into the Vintti’s lofty atmosphere.

Tamara Piilola’s (b. 1977) works consist of large-scale nature-themed oil paintings, in which the abundance of the plant world is present in colours and shapes. In her opinion, avalanches that occur in nature are endlessly interesting to watch due to their specifics. The purity of colours and the power of expression are an important element in Piilola’s work. The composition gives the painting a strong frame, in which there is space to play with picturesqueness and representativeness. Piilola, who lives and works in Helsinki, graduated from the Turku Art Academy in 2003 and the Academy of Fine Arts in 2010. Her long stays in France and Germany have made an impact on her work. Piilola was awarded the Didrichsen Pro Arte Prize in 2016. Her works are included in a number of significant collections, such as Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, Sara Hildén Art Museum, Didrichsen Art Museum and HAM Helsinki Art Museum.