CANDIDATE 2009

Petri Yrjölä

Petri Yrjölä’s paintings exert their influence slowly

Nowadays, the subject is often northern nature: water and reflections on it; a forest that sucks us into its depths; an impenetrable, tangled thicket, through which gleam a few rays of light that turn the colours unreal; a lone tree. The Wagnerian gloom of the forest has to be listened to, embraced. The light does not play, but breaks through portentously, is filtered, falls, flashes sharply or caresses the trunk of a tree. Somewhere an engaging little creature, a bumblebee, perhaps representing a threatened living environment. The subdued colour scale and handling of space speak of a mature Painter.

Ullamaria Pallasmaa