Marja Tuominen exhibits wolves with oil, watercolour and collage. Lasse Tuominen’s minimally edited nature photographs are mostly close ups with an occasional landscape.

 

An evening with wolves

Marja Tuominen was born in Lavia in 1943 and has a doctorate in pedagogy. She studied mathematics at the University of Turku and ended up to teach in Lapland. In Kittilä, she got interested in painting and has painted ever since. She has studied painting with Sven Grönvall, Pekka Syrjä, Aulikki Nukala, Matti Mikkola, Irene Krohn and most recently, Pekka Syväniemi.

 

Marja has taught visual arts in community colleges, children's art camps and in middle school. Lately, her own work has focused on watercolour.

 

She paints wolves for many reasons. One is her reindeer herding dog, that looks like a little wolf and behaves very much like one. So for years, she has drawn and painted images of animals that remind her of wolves.

 

She has also examined wolf-mythology and wonders, why this beautiful representative of nature is portrayed as a cruel animal that mauls children and grandmothers. The wolf just hunts for food, she thinks. Thus it eats animals that belong to the deer family, rabbits and moles.

 

Once Marja saw on TV a picture of a hunter and a dead wolf, that inspired her to stand up for wolves. She says that wolf-packs take care of their offspring collectively and they hunt collectively. The alfa couple lives together all their lives.

- The life of wolves is an example to us who make lofty talk about sense of community and trustworthiness.

 

Initially, Marja created images randomly as she redrew a wolf or two in a children's story book. She wanted the image to justify the wolf's place in nature, to show that wolves occupy a niche in the forests. They were here before us and maybe we can learn something from them.

 

Alongside with the exhibition's serious message, Marja has painted with humour and warmth, with tongue in cheek. Perhaps her paintings would work as re-illustrations in children's stories about wolves?

 

Walk in nature with open eyes

Lasse Tuominen was born in Turku in 1944, and he is a biologist by training. He came to Lapland first to Kevo and then to Meltosjärvi in Ylitornio because of his studies.

 

Since a little boy, he has been interested in nature and gardening. He used to spend hours alone in nature and he observed everything possible. He became a gardener thanks to his grandfather, who was a carpenter, blacksmith and above all, commercial gardener.

 

He has been a photographer since a schoolboy. Most recently, he has focused on details that the ordinary nature observer does not pay attention to.

 

Everyone who has a camera happens upon a situation where he or she documents events.

- On the other hand, photographers also actively search for what interests them, he explains.

 

Nature is a large and complex entity ranging from huge, hundreds of years old trees to their minuscule root hairs, not to talk about how trees communicate through their root systems. Lasse is interested in what is lies between these extremes, the large and the minuscule. He wants to portray things that can be observed with the naked eye but often are neglected.

 

The camera is an excellent medium to map out ordinary details from a big picture and, at the same time, recognise those indispensable elements in nature. For him, the best of all is to encounter interesting details that are also very beautiful.

 

Opening hours:

Tue. - Fri. 11 am to 5 pm

Sat. - Sun. 12 noon to 4 pm

 

Free entry!

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Join us for the opening event 4.10 at 6pm

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Behind the Art, 24.10

Päivi Lundwall interviews Marja and Lasse Tuominen about their art in an event where guests can learn what goes behid the art. Guests can also ask questions. Please note that event is only in Finnish. More info.

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