I was in Finland in January at Arteles Creative Centre, undertaking a Silence Awareness Existence Residency in the company of ten amazing other resident artists and the wonderful Arteles team. It was a truly life-changing month, and I came back with many new experiences, photos, video footage and ideas to sift through. The highlight for me (in relation to my art practice, as well as a social highlight) was exploring the land art sites nearby- Tree Mountain, by Agnes Denes, and Yltä ja Alta (Up and Under) by Nancy Holt. Watching artists engage with a landscape created by an artist was very interesting and is continuing to open up new ideas about the creation of landscapes and how artists in particular engage with non-natural non-functional sites.
I couldn't stay away from the paints though, especially with the long hours of darkness and some extreme cold during the residency. I mainly worked in gouache and watercolour, but snuck in some tiny oil paintings as well. Gouache and watercolour are not my usual media, but I enjoyed using them to explore moments of stillness in the gentle Finnish landscape. The few works in the gallery below all feature fellow residents stopped in their tracks at a particular site (two of which are at Yltä ja Alta). Their moment of stillness became my moment of stillness, and hopefully then becomes the viewer's as well. The rings around these works were conceived as a reference to the camera lens with which these moments were originally captured, and a restriction of focus which seems appropriate to the experience of winter that far north. I also liked how the pigment moved on the wet paper, drying in a way that is similar to the formation of ice crystals.
If you're an artist (or creative practitioner of any kind) I would really recommend applying for a residency at Arteles. Applications are now open for this winter's Silence Awareness Existence residencies... until 29 April.
