Cecilia Aaro
Relationship to tradition?
My closest relationship is to early Renaissance painting. It is a topic which I have studied thoroughly, having travelled to see the works on location, and so on. Especially the Belgians Hans Memling and Jan Van Eyck from the 15th century are my favourites. What I really like in Memling’s portraits is the sense of technical concentration and carefulness. From our present time, I can mention a name like Bridget Riley. Surely, I am fond of OP-art, and what I do is a little in that direction, but not quite.
I see myself, actually, not as an abstract painter, but as a painter who presents and re-presents. My ambition is not to come up with a picture of an all-encompassing wholeness, but rather to work with fragments. My paintings tell stories, they want to pass on something and they always have a rather clear starting point. Let us take the series called Dorothy - made in 2001 - which is in the exhibition. The very beginning for this work is the scene in the The Wizard of Oz, where a close-up shows the fabric of the young girl's dress. She is just about to lose her consciousness. This was, in fact, connected to my own sentiments at that time when I started to do Dorothy series.
I do not, of course, want to limit or restrain the viewer's take and connotations, but on the level of sentiments, for me the work starts off with a similar feeling of having the ground beneath my feet vanish, like the floor spinning around, as if you were falling.
Inspiration?
Well, it is not other painters. Mostly film and fashion. I have to mention Italian Vogue, which is an important source. It is just so aesthetic, beautiful and stylish. I get these sensations, which I then develop and take somewhere else. And I believe this is what one has to do - to start off somewhere and then make something different out of it.
The possibilities of painting?
For me it is a very challenging medium and this is inherent in its always already limited character. You are given pre-defined frames, which you then try to transgress and go beyond. I think that the advantage of painting is the fact that the time devoted to make the painting plays such a huge role. In a finished painting, you see and sense basic human feelings and the time invested in it.
What do you read?
This varies, but I read a lot of Japanese literature. One of my favourites is Yasunari Kawabata, Yukio Mishima is another. I like their unbelievably simple language, which just flows and flows so effortlessly.
What is your relationship towards your chosen subject?
It is personal, based on feelings. My paintings used to be more autobiographical. This is one reason that I use films as starting points - I do it in order to remove focus from myself and not to lapse into personal therapy, but to make my work more open and accessible for all people. Still, a lot of the paintings are focused on the feeling of missing something and being sad. This sadness does not need no be formulated as anything dramatic, but is connected to absence.
Sketches and seriality?
In fact, I hardly ever do any sketches, I paint directly on MDF. But seriality is important for me. I have done a lot of series with which I try to relate this feeling of time passing, as if the chosen theme and image would - due to the seriality - slowly but surely disappear. I also want to dig deeper, to seek the alternations within one framework. It can be frustrating not to get the theme moving or being unable to add anything, but at the same time it is very giving to have the courage to hold on to it. I think that it is rather strange how there often is this demand on artists to constantly renew themselves.
The role of the artist?
The role of the artist is to interpret the world and try to present these artistic views, but also to come to terms with personal questions and problems – and pass on that knowledge as well. I think there is a need to work through material and to redefine things. There is definitely something important in the fact that I have seen so many horror movies, such as The Shining and Repulsion, and have used images from them in my works. One painting, for example, depicts the pattern of the carpet that is seen in the hotel corridors in The Shining. I guess my interest in these violent, horrible movies attest to the fact that I simply have the need to process things.
Modernism and artist as a hero?
The myth of the artist as a hero is quite uninteresting. I do not know why, but I have not been in conflict with modernistic claims. Modernism is not part of my world-view. I really do not have any ism that I am for or against. I am not so interested in the whole body of work of a certain artist, but mainly in special parts. So I tend to be selective and go for the particular, the fragments.
Mika Hannula
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