Liisa Karintaus
Land of Color and Shade
6 February–2 March 2025
Color and shadow
Colors take on a meaning when placed next to each other.
Liisa Karintaus’ paintings, created using oil paints, charcoal and dry or oil pastels, create spaces where seemingly abstract elements become representational. In her works, bright color fields gain depth from areas of shade. Overlapping tones mix together to develop a variety of nuances that make new spaces emerge from the simultaneous distinctness and adjacency of shades. Complementary colors, mellow greens, violets, reds, turquoises, oranges and blues, all find their place as if they had always been there. The sharpness of contrasts is softened by multi-layered intermediate colors that create parallel spaces, both bright and dim, areas radiating calm light.
In her paintings and drawings, Karintaus uses colors so that they enable the viewer to perceive subjects such as natural landscapes, trees and sky meet humans, animals, dogs, birds and horses. Their figures make the images recognizable. At the same time, Karintaus’ subjects all seem to be at the same level. Even though in reality a dog will see the landscape from a lower perspective and horses and birds from a higher position than humans, everyone’s gaze is at the same level in the paintings. We are part of a shared landscape. Their shared spaces make one think whether it is, in fact, possible to speak about abstraction since living creatures are featured in these paintings. The walking dog brings the works close to the ground – and perhaps the viewer comes to think that the landscapes seen in Karintaus’ paintings may actually be the dog’s walking terrain with its varied multi-sensory routes. On a path, both in the sunlight and in the twilight, the colors form something comparable to fragrant signs guiding the dog and its walker. Colors are places for a wanderer.
It is easy to draw comparisons between Karintaus’ paintings and early 1900s expressionism and the German Der Blaue Reiter group. In Karintaus’ exhibition, references to cubism and symbolism as seen in the works of Edvard Munch evoke a sense of movement in the middle of halted moments.
While Liisa Karintaus’ exhibition contains references to history, her paintings are also unmistakably contemporary with their translucent and airy hues. One shall also wonder the nature of symbolism with its ambiguity – the sense of being both obvious and hidden in the works. Color turns out to be the reality of these very paintings: at times dense, at times accentuated, tinged with light, breathing freely.
Martta Heikkilä, PhD
Liisa Karintaus (b. 1977, Muurola, Rovaniemen maalaiskunta) is a Helsinki-based painter with a Master of Fine Arts degree. She has participated in exhibitions since 2001, both in Finland and abroad. In 2025, Karintaus is also teaching painting as a lecturer (specializing in material studies) at Uniarts Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Arts.
Thank you
The exhibition has been supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation.
Contact information
Liisa Karintaus
lkarintaus (a) gmail.com
p.0405825333
www.liisakarintaus.net
@liisakarintaus
