Terhikki Vaarala

Terhikki Vaarala (b. 1992) is a Helsinki-based visual artist and landscape architect whose paintings explore the experience of place, as well as the moods and memories associated with landscapes. Her painting process is a form of exploration: playful experimentation with colour, alternation between figurative and abstract mark-making, variations in rhythm, a sense of movement, and the search for tension and balance between these elements all contribute to the rich worlds that emerge on her canvases.

“What fascinates me most is a kind of mark-making in which rigour and freedom exist side by side. By rigour, I mean technique, the ideas that guide the process, drawing skills, and a relationship with observation—in short, everything that results from practice and preparation. By freedom, I mean openness to multiple interpretations of the subject, intuitive changes of direction during the process, breaking away from drawing and observation, and deliberately introducing accidents and making use of them.

“I consider this balance particularly important when depicting landscapes. Nature always contains both order and disorder—a kind of directed chaos. At times, you take control; at others, you let go. Paintings that achieve this feel vital to me because they follow the same logic and chaos as nature—and, in fact, life itself.

“The works in this exhibition are based on experiences in the outer archipelago. Nowhere else have I encountered the same simultaneous strength and sensitivity of landscape as I have at sea. The sea is full of contrasts: it connects us to everything, yet it also separates; it is ancient and enduring, yet constantly changing from one moment to the next. The sea is sensitive, but also fierce and uncompromising. Water and moisture in the air introduce another fascinating element: mist conceals what is visible, responds to light, and blurs our perception of distance, as well as the boundary between inner and outer experience.”

Terhikki Vaarala graduated as a visual artist from the Arts Academy at Turku University of Applied Sciences in 2022 and as a landscape architect from Aalto University in 2017. In 2021, Vaarala was selected as Young Artist of the Month for Gumbostrand Konst & Form’s summer exhibition. She has also undertaken artist residencies at Art Centre Salmela and Villa Lante in Rome.