In her art, Saimi Suikkanen turns her gaze on fleeting, intimate moments in the midst of monotonous day-to-day routines. She paints subjects as seemingly nondescript as clothing piled on a chair or a tea bag sagging on the edge of the kitchen sink. How can something so apparently trivial be transformed into something so spellbinding on canvas?

She takes inspiration from slow-paced films and books in which the storyline seems to move nowhere. Through her paintings, Suikkanen strives to capture the lingering inertia of arrested moments that verge upon tedium. Her method is partly intuitive. Sometimes, a nuanced color might inspire her to replicate exactly the same shade on canvas. Occasionally, she might stumble upon a suitable theme after an unremarkable daily occurrence – a forgettable experience such as trying on a shirt that has grown too tight is a mundane incident, but one that imparts a tragicomic narrative that lends itself consummately to a painting. She records her observations as cellphone photos and text snippets, which then jots down whenever she notices anything of interest. Afterwards she harnesses these random observations in the studio as raw material in her painting process.

Saimi Suikkanen (b.1994) graduated with a master’s degree in fine arts from Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Arts (in 2022) and a degree in painting from the Saimaa University of Applied Sciences in 2017. She has held several solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Finland and internationally. Her work has been acquired for the collection of the National Union of University Students in Finland and the Finnish Art Society’s annual art raffle. Her work har been supported by several foundations including Kone Foundation, Finnish Art Society, Finnish Cultural Foundation and Oskar Öflund Foundation.

Artist CV