Intertwined

The people in Mira Kankaanranta’s paintings merge with nature, as they seek their own rhythms and ways of being. The cycle of nature can also be seen through its budding, blooming and wilting. Eventually, the people themselves also undergo a transformation, becoming intertwined with the flora and fauna.

And it’s not only humans and nature that intertwine: the paintings also weave together the internal and the external, the visible and the invisible world. Kankaanranta’s works have grown out of both observation and a fascination with nature’s colours and details. They are likewise the product of emotion, ambience and intuition. Her landscapes always flourish with imagination – gardens of the mind that go beyond reality.

Their imagery is a blend of the living and the gone, of burgeoning life and decomposing matter – juxtaposing transience with continuity, and vulnerability with care. The fragility of existence, with all its pain, takes cover in the luxuriant vegetation. These melancholy feelings are primarily encapsulated in the human beings, whose bare skin and raw wounds can be interpreted as emotions personified. There is an echo of sympathetic solace in the figures’ gentle sadness and endearing rawness.

Kankaanranta’s works are built up bit by bit, layer by layer, without sketches or precise plans. This gives them a very organic feel: twisting, searching stokes of paint that fall onto the canvas in soft folds. All of the sidetracks and missteps that were inherent in the painting process are hidden in these layers. The image speaks to the artist as it steers its own path. The recurring symbols that are repeated from painting to painting create a distinctive imagescape of shared and divided humanity.

Mira Kankaanranta (born 1983) is a visual artist from Tornio who now lives and works in the village of Teijo near Salo. Kankaanranta is a graduate of Saimaa University of Applied Sciences. She has had several solo and joint exhibitions all across Finland. Her works can be found in the collections of the State Art Commission, Aine Art Museum and City of Rovaniemi.

This exhibition has been produced with support from the Finnish Heritage Agency.