#31 – Rêve de Karélie
December 2015 – January 2016
Acrylic on canvas (1m x 1m)
I started Rêve de Karélie (Dream of Karelia) one very special evening on 1 January 2016. I started with wide brushstrokes in magenta, red and green, creating swirls with the magenta, mixing it with some white and letting the brush create some beautiful contrasts.
Next, I added some light blue in long fine brushstrokes all over the canvas. I used a favourite technique of mine, spraying water on the wet paint to create interesting effects, mopping the excess paint with a rag directly on the canvas. This gave it a kind of distressed look, with the vertical brushstrokes in blue being almost erased by the water, and creating in places an almost stripy structure.
I then diluted some white and cobalt blue fluid paint and put the canvas on the floor of my studio and with soft arm movements above it, I let the fluid paint drip on the canvas, enjoying the process along the way, as if it was snowing. I let it dry for a little while. It was dark outside.
When I returned to the dried painting, I used little sponges with very little white paint to add fluffy-like bubbles of softness. It felt like a magical, dream-like snowy landscape, so to add to the magic, I stencilled some delicate snow flakes in gold and finished off the painting with very fine golden red brushstrokes.
And then…
Then I looked outside and it was snowing!! I could not believe it!! Had I felt the snowflakes as I was painting on the canvas? Had I sensed something in the air? I felt very moved and I sensed that it had been a very special night, when I’d been absorbed in my painting but also one with what was going on in the darkness.
I decided to give the painting this title as the light in it reminded me of winter days in Karelia that I had experienced when I was 17, on an exchange programme with my class of Russian language in the city of Petrozawodsk in Karelia, northern Russia at the frontier with Finland… It was in February and -25°c. The vertical blue strokes look almost like birch trees in the forest near Petrozawodsk where I did cross-country skiing, and sat by an improvised fire while drinking home-made heart-warming alcool that my Russian friends called “cinzano”. Oh the lovely, gentle, muffled atmosphere of this forest deep under snow near the city of Petrozawodsk. I’ll never forget it.
And when I look at Dream of Karelia, it still brings me a nostalgic smile about these moments.
And the story doesn’t stop here… Through my job at a large consulting firm, I’m lucky to be able to work with teams from all over the world, including Finland. Do you know who fell in love with Rêve de Karélie? My lovely colleague Månna Godenhjelm whose mother and her family from both sides happened to be… from the Finnish side of Karelia! What a small world we live in…
Rêve de Karélie is now with her, in Helsinki, a little bit closer to its source of inspiration!
*** painting in private collection ***