Biography

Eeva Lietonen’s paintings are full yet unstable abstract ensembles. In her art she introduces parts from fictional universes. Mind is capable of travelling elsewhere and it can create places. Lietonen arranges these parts and places into undefined forms moving from structured to disarray by combining, dissolving, covering, exposing and finding alternative solutions. She uses different techniques in her art, but oil painting is her main medium at the moment.

Eeva Lietonen (b. 1987) is Helsinki based artist. She studies in the painting department in Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, Finland. Lietonen has attended numerous group exhibitions and has had two solo exhibitions.

“When I paint, I think about stories, the everyday environment, something between the general and the per- sonal. Experiences, feelings and observations play a significant role in what I do. They go along with the process and are shaped by it. In my paintings, I try to communicate with different, clearer and more obscure meanings. The works have parts of internal and external landscapes. These parts are arranged in the picture field into living objects, color areas and partially undefined shapes, moving from fragmented to structured and back. With the materiality of my paintings, I try to create different mental images that complement the vagueness of the essence of the subjects. My painting language includes layering and partially covering and thick textures.

For the past three years, I have been making oil paints myself. Making oil paint has become an organic part of what I do and the thinking and creation of motifs. For example, microscopic thinking and imagining of the chemical compositions of minerals might filter into the painting process. I imagine the structures of par- ticles and the events of crystal fields. My imagination hardly corresponds to real chemical phenomena, but it opens a pleasant platform for imagination and associations.

Observations on the characteristics of different pigments bring out the matter’s own agency and its aspira- tions. I am interested in how we interact with matter, more precisely pigment and paint material, in different stages of the painting process, which I think starts already with the production of paint.

In my art, I use several techniques, mainly oil on canvas, but I also do sculptures and drawings. As an inspi- ration, I use patterns, loose narratives, imaginary places and utopias that can be seen as a sentiment in the outcome. Making art is to allow myself to step into a giddy ground and finding alternative solutions for the making and living. Humor, imagination, failure, emotions, sensibility, perseverance and courage are matters that I cherish.”