I paint in oil on tablecloths, bedspreads and garments. My work is large in scale, from 6ft-12ft and is hung as a tapestry, without a frame and directly on the wall. I stretch, unfold, and discover what may be hidden in a fold of a cloth. Objects woven, embroidered, and sewn long ago are painted to reveal a pattern, on to which a portrait or a figure is superimposed. Some images are painted into large manmade or natural landscapes where several layers of cloth are collaged together. I call my painting process “slow painting” because it may take me a year or more to complete a work.
The "Iconoportrait" series I am currently working on is inspired by my Ingrian-Finnish lineage.
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"Silent" (#1) is a portrait of my grandmother who perished in a Stalinist-Soviet prison, leaving only the hope that her small children will survive. “Shekhina” (#2) is a painting of a young woman who is depicted holding an egg, a symbol of fertility and of mourning; of hope and choice. A tablecloth, as I see it, is a receptacle for tears, shouts, blessings, and curses—a canvas for emotion. A nightgown, an apron—once cared for; are now abandoned. What remains is the memory of a vanished story, a silent hope.
These pieces weave together threads of generational family trauma—a history of arrests, deportations, and killings. When contemplating the concepts that come up in my art—female dependence and independence, beauty, violence, and vulnerability—I consider these questions: what does it mean to be abandoned by your country? How does strife shape the generations that follow it? How do we preserve the emotions of the past?
