KRISTIINA UUSITALO - VORACIOUS LIGHTLaukko Manor Viljamakasiini, Vesilahti, Finland 25.6.2024 – 25.8.2024
Swallowed Eyes III, 2024oil, dry pigment, artificial resin and wax on MDF-board, 205 x 205 cm
Kristiina Uusitalo’s large-scale landscapes present visionary worlds of breathtaking beauty. They convey both fear and a glimmer of fragile hope in the face of the current ecological crisis.
“Nature nurtures us, it views us with maternal compassion. It heals and nourishes. We are entirely dependent on Mother Earth. Everything else we imagine we need is replaceable.”
Inner and outer worlds are inextricably linked in Uusitalo’s experiential interpretations of nature. Her paintings visualize the artist’s inner experience of reality. Time loses its meaning as the past and future coalesce and experienced reality becomes inseparable from the imagined. In her latest paintings, Uusitalo returns to the landscapes of her childhood in the Saimaa lakelands. Soaring above watery vistas bathed in the glow of dusk and dawn, her lilies and roses convey a sense of life’s fleeting transience, while also evoking the enchantment of well-tended gardens. Laukko Manor’s setting on the shores of Lake Pyhäjärvi is a fitting home for the art of Uusitalo, who grew up on the island of Partala in Sulkava. The sweeping, confident brushstrokes and radiant hues of her distinctive oil paintings in the manor’s monumental granary invoke the presence of greater-thanhuman forces that preside over nature.
Liisa Lagerstam
PhD, Owner and Creative director of Laukko Manor
