Girl with a red shirt
2018
Haapa, värikynä
Wooden portrait of my daughter. When you can combine two things that you love, then the work process is full of enjoyment, happiness but there is also some sadness.
I love to make portraits. It is always challenging technical tasks, and there is always a lot of room to improve. But is not only a technical or mechanical task to produce an accurate copy of a model.
When I was making this portrait is also forced me to look, touch and feel my daughter that way that is impossible in normal life. I look at my daughter’s face, try to understand them, try to capture the essence. The face also gives me hints from history. Is that forehead resembling my forehead and my father’s? Are there some traits in the overall shapes of face similar to my mother face? What does my mother see when she looks her granddaughter? Does she see traits of her mother or grandfather?
Portraits also deal with time. This wooden portrait also goes through changes during the time, but those changes are slow compared to changes what people undergo. For me, this time element which is included in every portrait is also dealing with the deep question related to human life and our mortality.
Accepting and facing this mortality makes things witch you love the most even more important.