During the last few years I have been painting city nature. I got interested in that theme a few years ago. One cold winter evening I managed to see a snowy owl in Helsinki. The city started to look different when I tried to look at it through the eyes of an owl visitor. The space between buildings, the asphalt islands, wind tunnels and rocky walls all became more important. Urban nature started to feel like something living under the surface.
Sounds echo well from rocky walls. My owl paintings are silent, but the seagull paintings can be noisy.
I like my paintings to have something that is very much alive but also fleeting. The nature in my paintings has many time layers in it- the time of cells, the time of animals, the time of evolution. Animals can act like gates through which you can see the time and different seasons behind the cityscape.
