Even though this isn´t about observing people, it´s about people. People as characters, silhouettes, the blotch that´s left after successfully swatting a fly – here people are a part of the big picture – the big picture around me that I have learnt to much appreciate.

 

 

Room, light, space, water, oxygen, colour and cosmos – the whole planet in the universe as we understand it to date. The cosmic beauty of existence unfolds unconditionally, fuelling my subconscious as my conscious ego falls silent. Naturally, I view the latest achievements in natural science and technology with admiration and wonder as I seek to take them in.

 

 

I´ve begun to wonder about the essence of people, what they do to themselves and to others. I try to see humanity as an external extra-terrestrial being without relinquishing my own humanity. Like an attempt to view it from afar and at close hand. Our spirituality and animality live in a strange co-existence like Ghandi and the Alien in the same body, destroying and protecting our planet at the same time.

 

 

Nordic existentialism and expressionism are in the background supporting my painting process. They pave the way to my inner self, which has grown up in a time of pop, minimalist and postmodernism, to find something that questions in the spirit of magic realism, romanticism, symbolism and colourism for my painting terrain. In a spirit where canvas has replaced paper in this exhibition. My paintings are water colour on canvas. The process has required a new approach to painting and given the painter the joy of finding something new…

 

 

The sky, air, water and empty space form the backdrop for my paintings, forcing aside the nightmare of materialistic junk and the feeling of happiness it creates. The question is: what´s left? Is it people with their personal impressions who fill the void and versions of the people that the world today has driven outside society?

 

 

How does humanism fare today when humanity around us is driven by strict demands and ever stricter working hours? Medieval serfs had more time to themselves than people do today. Villages of tents on wasteland eke out a meager existence in developed and developing countries in a world fighting against overpopulation where the number of humans has increased to almost 10 thousand million individuals….

 

 

Where is humanism today? This is what I have asked myself when painting inside in my study, where ground-source heat keeps my fingers warm in the town, or when outside in the great outdoors, where the cold deviously gradually sneaks inside my body. Or abroad, on the peripheries of the EU, where floods of refugees embellish the seashore and have sneaked into my consciousness to stay.

 

 

The painting process does not question the painting itself, but humanity: has Homo sapiens recently transformed from a human into an ape, robot or a toy? Or into a merciless terminator devoid of its own values, a creation that destroys unknown individuals around it without a grain of sense, constantly repeating the only truth that has been programmed in the chip card implanted in its brainwashed mind – the terminator´s truth.

There it is, something about us, humanity, wretchedness and loveliness…

Porvoo, Petri Hytönen 17 August 2015