Eeva Peura: Little Moon
Galerie Forsblom, 11.2.–6.3.2022
Looking at paintings by Eeva Peura (b.1982) is like stumbling upon an alternative plane of reality. With their alluring absurdity, they grab us by the collar and yank us along for a wild ride. Her paintings are an amalgam of found images, imagined memories, and a contrary mix of paintings styles. Peura is intrigued by the way reality and fantasy become jumbled in our minds, and this fusion is what lends her paintings their fierce intensity. Her paintings cast a magnetic spell that nails our gaze irresistibly. Beneath their dark exterior is an undercurrent of tenderness, and despite their eccentricity, the characters and scenes she portrays exude a touching sense of human frailty – they are deeply feeling, melancholy figures that stir our empathy.
Becoming deeply immersed in the painting process is an inherent part of Peura’s method. Her paintings take shape through deep concentration on details such as tree branches, moons, rippling water, and the forms of plants and animals, but intuition and chance play an equally important role in her process. When she begins painting, Peura never knows exactly where the process will lead. Time is a critical element, and sometimes it requires a long conversation for the painting to find its final shape. The key is to trust the process and embrace its unfolding stages.
Eeva Peura majored in painting at Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Arts, graduating in 2011. She has held numerous solo and group exhibitions in Finland at venues such as Forum Box, Galleria Sinne, and the Mänttä Art Festival. In summer 2018 she was based in Paris as an artist-in-residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts. She was the 2019 winner of the William Thuring Prize.