BEAUTY

 

Beauty is Nothing Without

the Dark Side of Life

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Marita’s art is highly visual – whether it is painted, digital, the still or moving image, or a live performance on stage. We could also say that it is beautiful, whether carefully considered and polished or more spontaneous. Colour and light are always more important and even in her paintings Marita considers how materials will reflect light.

‘There is, however, always a kind of wild side to my work, the aesthetic alone is not enough. When Golden Age as whole began to be complete a year before the exhibition and the works were extremely beautiful, the only thing I was worried about was whether the exhibition would have enough of an edge to it’, she says.

’I don’t aim at beauty – my world IS like this. Beauty is nothing without the dark side of life. Even in beautiful people, you have to see the human crack in the edifice that makes them unique. I’m not interested in photoshopped model men and women.’

Daylight, natural sunlight, is important in Marita’s works. She prefers to photograph in daylight, but a psychic once said that her works are born of the night.

‘That’s true, for I often make images at night. Digital image processing is best done in the evening and at night, for example the Tarot cards and all the portraits of Golden Age were created at night, and they mostly have a black background. I even ground my canvases with black lava. In other words, when making images I proceed from black, not white. The elements of night and day must be present in all the works’

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Marita wants to have the best possible control of the aesthetic dimension, but points out that this does not mean just the surface. It also includes the fact that looming under the surface is the whole range of the human palette from fear to joy, and from pain to happiness.

‘My short films Return of the Goddess and Swan Song are danses macabres, addressing the moment of death. While they are beautiful, they also depict the one thing that we know definitely and therefore fear so much. The story comes from the contrast.’

Also beauty and seeing what lies under the surface are always in the eye of the beholder, with differences between individuals and cultures alike. Marita has always noticed a gender difference. Women often enjoy dance in the short films and identify with the female characters, while men more readily note that the films are stories about death.

‘I respect artistic professionalism and, as a perfectionist, the careful finishing of works, regardless of what is done. Looking at the works of artists, I feel that I see through them straight into their world. Something that is poorly done or incomplete focuses attention on the wrong things. The spell is not cast.’

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The notion of the dark side of beauty is also associated with Marita’s childhood memories.

‘I learnt to walk in a dark forest and to wade in the black waters of a bog. Black water is particularly terrifying. But once you have conquered your fear, you will always be empowered by what you have previously feared. I’ve felt that I’m a part of nature, part of its day and night.’

But nature has become part of Marita’s art only recently, as she has previously focused on people in her works.

‘I filmed videos in the winter, and then I have painted other seasons. I would never have believed that I would make a series of works about the seasons in Finland!’

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Painting is also new, or actually resumed after a long pause.

‘When I moved my studio to Heinola a few years ago, I didn’t know what would happen.

The large spaces of a factory building and peace and quiet for working began to lead to large paintings, often measuring at least two metres, the kind

that you can’t see completely with one glance from painting distance. Marita often paints without brushes, directly with her hands.

Beauty with its various aspects achieved new forms in the paintings. The element of surprise came to accompany the extreme control of the digital works.

‘I try to be as empty as possible when I go to the studio. If I decide in advance what the painting will become, nothing will become of it. I have occasionally destroyed works that are good, because I want them to be excellent. They must have drama to them. I’ve made my best works by doing something radical, like pouring a bucketful of lava water on the painting.’

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The paintings differ from Marita’s other works in that they can be abstract. Or if the motifs are figurative, they refer to nature. When she was younger, she painted people, but they are not to be seen in the new work. Nonetheless, the paintings also tell stories of the world of people, beautiful and dark tales.
 

Marita tells of how one of her paintings was created, from a shocking coincidence that she experienced:

’A November evening was turning to night as I was looking at a three-part painting of mine. It was rich and full of colour like a flower, but it still lacked something. An edge was needed, the transgression that brings forth beauty. And then a strange phrase forced itself into my mind: ‘There is no beauty without blood’. I mixed the colour of dried blood from alizarin (from the Arabic al-lizari meaning pressed juice) and black lava and let it flow on the canvas. Now it was ready! I was so happy with the result that I wrote the phrase as the title of the painting. Driving home, I switched on the radio and heard that at the same time in Paris, at the Bataclan which was familiar to me, a bomb had gone off, killing a large number of people. I had to stop the car, look at my watch and think. Yes, I had painted that blood at the same moment when the bomb exploded.’