In her solo exhibition Elina Merenmies continues her work with profound, human, and eternal themes: emerging from within branches in the forest, among birds, rain, and leaves, the impressive and gently ferocious views investigate the human condition and existence executed in the artist’s precise, inimitable hand. In the works, we encounter Merenmies’s rich inner world and its diverse, captivating, and poignant characters.
The exhibition consists of new paintings and works on paper, most of them completed in the past three years, although some were begun much earlier. The process must be given time to evolve in peace. In many of the paintings, Merenmies returns to subjects going back decades – things that first sparked her soul: an encounter with an eagle in a park in Czechoslovakia more than thirty years ago, soul-seekers in the wilderness, and the many saints of the Orthodox Church, but also people from the artist’s immediate circle. The paintings are characterized by a distinctive, nuanced palette, with hints of traditional icon painting, as well as of the deep shades of green, blue and red typical of medieval art.
