Yrjölä, Petri | Artist Register – Artists’ Association of Finland

Basic information

b. 1972, Oulunsalo

Painter

Residence: Ii As.

Contact information

Phone number: +358 40 5656 826

Email: art339@gmail.com

Artist's Statement

Forest, the sea or water in some other form can be found in the paintings of Petri Yrjölä. In the individual motifs, the viewer can become interested for instance in bumblebees and trees, which can be regarded as his alter ego, or more generally as an allegory of man.

“Large paintings are windows onto another world that is familiar yet strange, perhaps fascinating, frightening, loveable, understandable… I don’t want to show everything, but to leave, instead, an element of mystery for viewers, who can see a work in terms of their own history, each in their own way.” His paintings involve dialogues of differences and the opposite ends of scales: light and shadow, surface and depth, figurative and non-figurative, the familiar and the strange.

Show biography

Bio

”Deeply comforting ballads of the human condition”

Yrjölä is definitely a born talent – regardless of his training in the arts, of which he has plenty. After comprehensive school, Yrjölä enrolled immediately in the Liminka Art School, continuing from there to the Nordic Art School in Kokkola. After two years of study in Kokkola, he went to study the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, graduating as a painter in 1998. “He paints landscapes, but his rugged landscape paintings do not just depict nature, but are above all gloomy, yet deeply comforting ballads of the human condition. Petri shines with his own light. That’s awesome”, has Henry Wuorila-Stenberg, his teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts, once said.

Yrjölä observes: “In my work, landscapes created from memories are abstracted and an important role in my paintings is given to the mood created by colour and light.” Yrjölä particularly takes into account the role of the viewer also when considering the size of the work: “Large paintings are windows onto another world that is familiar yet strange, perhaps fascinating, frightening, loveable, understandable… I don’t want to show everything, but to leave, instead, an element of mystery for viewers, who can see a work in terms of their own history, each in their own way.” His paintings involve dialogues of differences and the opposite ends of scales: light and shadow, surface and depth, figurative and non-figurative, the familiar and the strange.

Yrjölä paints in layers, slowly, occasionally taking his time just to meditate. Petri Yrjölä’s art could of course be approached through his themes and motifs. He often paints things that can be described as landscapes. Forest, the sea or water in some other form can be found in the paintings. In the individual motifs, the viewer can become interested for instance in bumblebees and trees, which can be regarded as Yrjölä’s alter ego, or more generally as an allegory of man. In my works I refer to things that I hope will touch the part of us that is the most fragile and the most important.”