9.5. — 1.6.2025

Milla Toivanen:
Everything Begins With a Touch – Emotional Portraits

  • Milla Toivanen: Open Protection 2 (2022).

I use oil paints to paint figures, which can be a gorilla, a dog, a saint, a modified face or an essence. The painting is sometimes swirling and labyrinthine, sometimes sharp and angular, but the intention is always to create a universe of its own in each painting.

Love and despair           light and darkness         truth and fear

eternity and finitude

pleasure and pain                  joy and sufferening

pride and humbleness

simplicity and complexity

weight and lightness

sensuality, carnality and spirituality

unity and fragility

often go hand in hand.

Everything is based on rhythm, everything begins with touch.

Painting for me is always a new attempt to be as free & whole as possible; there is always a new opportunity to be in the moment, to be in motion where things can – and may – happen. Everything is possible for a sensitive and endlessly curious mind.

Thanks to the Finnish Cultural Foundation / Uusimaa Fund and Taike.
The exhibition is dedicated to Elvi & Olavi.


“I am a painter born in Vantaa in 1972; I live in Helsinki. I paint figures in oil colours, which may include a gorilla, a dog, a saint, some creatures or a modified face. The work is always a portrait of some kind. The most important thing is to let go, to feel free, to feel that everything flows and everything has its place.”

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