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Kristiina Uusitalo

The outer limits of innocence, 2025

The work speaks of seeing what cannot be seen. I try to make visible what I feel to be true. It felt necessary to paint this image of disintegration, in which the internal and external appear intertwined. The change around us is so rapid that only a double exposure of the past and the future can somehow correspond to our experience of it. For a long time, I painted the vision of energy and insight brought about by the dazzling beauty of nature. The starting points for my work have been moments spent in our country's national landscapes as well as encounters with the pine trees in the nearby forest, which are just as festive.

We consider a strong relation to nature to be a particularly Finnish characteristic. What we are seeing now is a sharp division between those for whom connection to forests and water is a sacred necessity and those who do not think about it or miss it in their daily lives. I have felt that I have reached the outer limits of innocence. Our environment is undergoing major changes. It is gone with the wind. I am concerned about the change that we have not noticed. We look the other way, because it is still possible to live a comfortable life.  

The world is full of power and breathtaking beauty—and terror. Fear and sadness over loss. Awareness of the destruction of our most valuable asset, the nature that sustains us, has become part of the imagery in my paintings.  

Kristiina Uusitalo was born in Sulkava and grew up on an island in Lake Saimaa. Living in the middle of nature, far from the cities, and the boating hobby inherited from her father painted vivid pictures of Lake Saimaa’s landscapes into the mind of the artist. The setting of Kristiina Uusitalo's paintings is often this archetypal landscape, even though the events in her works refer to both the inner life of the mind and the overwhelming presence of the wider world. Kristiina Uusitalo attended Savonlinna Senior Secondary School of Arts and Music and trained to become a visual artist in Finland and the United States.