As Above So Below, As Below So Above

(...) for my part, I try to remain sensitive during our painting sessions, so that the actual handling of paint dictate the direction of the work and the emergence of the characters. In a way, I don't feel qualified to tell about the characters more than any attentive viewer. That is precisely one of the qualities we seek -through a kind of alchemic processes- in our works, that there is some reality to the characters, that they hold their own ground, and that they are free and able to create relationships with the viewer in their own terms.

The painting in question is called 'As Above So Below, As Below So Above'. The title, an old hermetic paraphrase, alludes to the correspondence between the different levels of existence. The painting doesn't fully settle into one single domain of perception or mode of being. Some of the elements feel familiar, while others, particularly on the right side of the painting, seem to have cropped up from 'beyond', from 'the other side'. Quotidian, concrete elements like the wooden table, the curious hands, the snowcapped mountain, the sunglasses are also present and serve to frame and ground the composition into a tangible reality.

Regarding your question weather the scene in the work is real or fictional, I believe our practice and its fruits profits from and thrives on the fertile ground between hard-and-fast, conventional reality and the mysterious realm of what may be possible, between bare naturalism and the world of imagination (which, unlike fantasy, may reveal a different genus of realism).

The painting belongs to the series of works we started under the exceptional circumstances of spring 2020. In this series of paintings in collaboration, an heterogeneous bunch of characters of different constitutions, backgrounds, temperaments, convictions and species, sit inexplicably around the same table. The driving force of the project has been a celebratory spirit for connection and for coming together, despite our differences.

Now, I may also share some of my own impressions on the painting. I am personally keen on the character at the centre of the composition, from behind whose head a strange botanical/floral formation seems to be blooming. I am also beguiled by the personage who appears to have breasts and wears a distinctive femenine dress, while exhibits a (fake?) beard and rests their sturdy, muscular arms on the table. There is also something in the interplay and interaction between the different kinds of white in the painting. The game is a popular table game in Spain and Latin America called parchís; I find its design an attractive pictorial element with its four arrows of different colours aiming to and coming together in a single spot. The snowy fell is characteristic of the region we live and work in Western Lapland. 

The painting was completed from April to November 2021 in our Sirkka studio.