Warm welcome to the opening reception of the exhibition on Tuesday October 27th from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

"Please hold me if there are any more of those occurrences!"

The works in Saara Kartimo's exhibition stem from strange tales, visions, and other "occurrences" recounted during Saara Kartimo’s childhood. These occurrences might involve, for instance, eccentric villagers, ghosts, or light phenomena; they were often described by Saara’s father, Pentti Kartimo, who spent his own childhood on the island of Hailuoto in the 1930s. Saara and her siblings also eagerly used their imaginations, often going to great lengths to scare one another. Storytelling is becoming a dying tradition, but Saara Kartimo wants to preserve the memory of those tales and capture in her watercolors the images that those "incidents" evoke for her now as an adult.

Over the years, Saara Kartimo has created everything from digital paintings to large-scale abstract oil paintings, though in recent years she has focused primarily on watercolors. What fascinates her about watercolors—beyond their inherent delicacy—is a certain element of surprise and unpredictability. Working with this medium requires one to tolerate so-called "mistakes," or even learn to see beauty within them. The subjects of her work have ranged from details found in nature to dark, nightmarish visions. Currently, Kartimo is particularly interested in the tradition of storytelling.

Saara Kartimo has participated in numerous group exhibitions and held several solo exhibitions. She holds a degree in art instruction (*artenomi*) as well as a vocational qualification in the fields of communication and visual arts. Her professional experience includes working as an art educator and a watercolor painting instructor. She resides in the village of Ritvala in Valkeakoski. She believes in the power of art as a source of well-being, even though art does not always have to be beautiful or easy to look at.

Above Saara Kartimo's work Suolsolmu - Volvulus

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