PETRI HYTÖNENPartly in Water - Partly in Sleep 8.8.2026 – 30.8.2028

I am as much a child of water as I am of the earth.

I have been able to swim since I was three. Water immediately enchanted me, becoming a refuge where I could lose myself in thought. Later in life, swimming became a routine: a way of keeping my mind and body in good condition. It has served as a means of meditation, devising funny new ideas, keeping physically fit and overcoming the damage I caused my body in my wild youth. I am thankful to water for giving me the feeling of weightlessness.


Swimming in open waters and swimming pools across the world, at least twice a week and a kilometre at a time, has brought me closer to nature and my fellow human beings. That is a routine I will never give up.

Swimming long distances engenders a hypnotic state that allows both the mind and body to rest. A sack of flesh pushes on calmly without pressure to perform. I swim and swim, letting my thoughts flow freely, and eventually the water becomes part of me. I am between air and water, as the earth comes closer.

With eyes closed in the sunlight, swimming on my back, the colours change. Even from behind my eyelids, I see tiny cells floating on the surface of my eyeballs. An odd sense of freedom, peace and eternity fills the swimmer, who, with the first kick of breaststroke, experiences a rush of emotion at their transformation into a frog. I float slowly onwards, moving all my limbs to an even rhythm and see dragonflies, fish, water birds and many other forms of life around me. Terns and gulls swoop towards me to protect their nests, and a water snake glides through the water, returning to its home under the pier. I can hear sounds from near and far, carried on the water from shore to shore or emerging just beside my ear. As I swim with my eyes closed, my existence as part of the universe makes everything around me fade away – only sounds and colours remain. The bright sunlight on the open water performs magnificent symphonies of colour behind my closed eyes.

Open air swimming offers delights that cannot be achieved in an indoor swimming pool, where the experience is trying not to collide your fellow swimmers in narrow lanes and sharing stories in the heat of the sauna. The transformation from an aquatic animal to an inhabitant of dry land is not easy, but knowing that I can become a water creature again is enough for me. With body and mind refreshed, I can carry on.

Painting my series Partly in Water – Partly in Sleep has been a journey. In seeking to capture on paper the hypnotic state that I achieve while swimming, my experimentation with watercolours has served as both challenge and reward. The paintings I produced during this project emerged largely from mental images, and partly from listening to the sensations of my body.

I hope that these paintings gives the idea of the joy of swimming, a love of clean waters and a sense of responsibility for our environment.


Petri Hytönen

Visual artist Petri Hytönen (born 1963) graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree after studying first at the University of Art and Design (now Aalto University) and then at the Academy of Fine Arts (now University of the Arts Helsinki). Since 1988, Petri Hytönen has held several solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group exhibitions both in Finland and abroad. Hytönen is known for his large-scale watercolor paintings, which have been his trademark since the nineties. In his work, he has also used mixed media, boldly combining watercolor with spray painting, photography, collage and drawing. The subjects of Hytönen's works are usually from his immediate environment, often including humor, human life, nature, everyday experiences, as well as art historical references.

Petri Hytönen’s works are included in the collections of the Malmö and Gothenburg art museums in Sweden, in Finland in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, the Sara Hildén Art Museum, the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation (Rovaniemi Art Museum), the Saastamoinen Foundation (Espoo Museum of Modern Art) and the Finnish State Art Commission’s collection. Petri Hytönen has been selected as the artist of the Helsinki Festival in 2004 and has been awarded Third Prize of the Carnegie Art Award (2000), the William Thuring Prize of the Finnish Art Society, (2005) and the Marcus Collin Memorial Fund Prize of the Society of Swedish Literature in Finland (2022).