Couple words of a longer essay "Something about us..."
The sky, air, water and empty space form the backdrop for my paintings, forcing aside the nightmare of materialistic junk and the feeling of happiness it creates. The question is: what´s left?
Is it people with their personal impressions who fill the void and versions of the people that the world today has driven outside society?
How does humanism fare today when humanity around us is driven by strict demands and ever stricter working hours? Medieval serfs had more time to themselves than people do today.
Where is humanism today?
This is what I have asked myself when painting inside in my study, where ground-source heat keeps my fingers warm in the town, or when outside in the great outdoors, where the cold deviously gradually sneaks inside my body.
Or abroad, on the peripheries of the EU, where floods of refugees embellish the seashore and have sneaked into my consciousness to stay.
The painting process does not question the painting itself, but humanity: has
Homo sapiens recently transformed from a human into an ape, robot or a toy?
Or into a merciless terminator devoid of its own values, a creation that destroys unknown individuals around it without a grain of sense, constantly repeating the only truth that has been programmed in the chip card implanted in its brainwashed mind - the terminator´s truth.
There it is, something about us, humanity, wretchedness and loveliness...
Porvoo, Petri Hytönen 17 August 2015