Sari Koski-Vähälä is a visual artist working in Turku, Finland, and a member of the Hyäryllistä Group.
Maalauksia Paintings
The exhibition displays six works of art, including an independent piece, and others comprised of up to 365 different parts. The paintings are reminiscent of installations and they all share serendipity. The exhibition is visually linked with gardens.
I discovered serendipity in anonymous public art, in a work of art placed in an urban environment by the artist, waiting to be discovered. Noticing it gave me a strong pleasurable sensation, finding it was an inspiration. Thus, chance is an affirmative emotion, but it is also a concrete event within the working process, such as finding the mould for “the sunrise”, or a picturesque element in a final work of art. For example, the filter papers sketched by coffee in “annual rings”.
Students on my amateur painting courses love gardens and flowers in the middle of a piece of paper. We have discussed our artistic differences numerous times, yet every time they make me equally dizzy, to the extent that I wanted to gently comment the theme, spiced up with some self-irony in “in full bloom”.
Inspired by these discussions I turned to explore photographs bought in a London flee market in the 90s. In the photos, one and the same garden is portrayed in the 70s. The owner of the house had photographed the flowers in his garden all year round during several years, from seed to the withered leaf. His wife was also often portrayed in the photographs. The luscious garden with the repetitive shapes, the recurring seasons in it, yet simultaneously serendipity, intimacy and the presence of pleasure were all highly inspiring factors.
My first flower paintings were painted on rags I had torn from the wedding linen of my parents.
