Heidi Ukkonen

Heidi Ukkonen paints mainly in fast-drying acrylic, also using egg tempera, pigment, aerosol and pastel, and layers colours and textures so that a canvas can read like a painted collage. Her figures come from daily life, often elegant daydreamers in fantastic garments, painted with an impulsive, immediate hand. Her paintings take on boredom, loneliness, monotony and human quirks while keeping hold of joy and optimism, moving between intimacy and theatricality and mixing personal symbolism with references to myth, ritual and popular culture. In Ukkonen's pictures the usual becomes unusual, the ugly becomes beautiful and pain turns into humour.