When I start to make a picture I stand in front of emptiness. I don’t have a plan. My brain is a storage of material in freefall. Something starts to tumble out; perhaps memories of Etruscan figures transporting their lines to the drawings of Matisse for example. Or the sonorities of Klee versus the expressive power of Nolde. The kind of endless associations with the visual, be it painting throughout the ages, as the driving force in the creative process of painters.
Colours start to measure each other up. Dynamic shapeshifting volumes are born out of necessity. I’m not a retiring quiet painter. I like the rough and tumble in the creative process so I have to run with the pictures. A lot of trust goes into letting each individual picture to inhabit its own sphere. At some point it is finished enough and continues to live its own life.
Out of respect to basic values of moderation I work with simple materials. In this exhibition I have chosen to show works whose vitality and voluminous energy fights against dissipation and the soullessness of our time.
Kirsi Mikkola (1959) was born in Helsinki, Finland. She now lives in Berlin, Germany, and holds a professorship of fine art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria.