Juha Pesonen is a Tampere-based creator of pictures, who lives on visual art, life, and contemplation. Through his art, he seeks to map out the human aspects of life and to understand humanity’s relationship with history and the surrounding world. Pesonen’s works have been featured in numerous exhibitions, and he has been canonized as an ITE and outsider artist. Pesonen explains that he exhibits his art because his late poet friend, Jorma K., appeared to him in a dream and urged him to do so.
“Being an artist is almost like a secret identity for me. I don’t bring it up in my everyday life. I like being a person among people, listening and observing. From an evolutionary perspective, we are quite peculiar creatures. We convey emotions and thoughts both verbally and non-verbally. We have developed a consciousness capable of looking at itself from the outside. Drawing is a way of thinking and finding meanings. A way to explore humanity—the abstraction of emotion and thought into color and structure through an intuitive and spontaneous medium. If I were to frame my message as a question, it would be this: If light were reflected into your innermost self, what would it look like? Or if light reflected outward from within you—would it be beautiful, or something else?” Pesonen says, describing his thoughts on art and the creative process.
Curators’ comments: ”Pesonen is a seasoned artist whose work seems to have found a completely new sense of joy and liberated lightness. Pesonen’s imaginative paintings flow freely, creating their own exceptionally holistic world that is open to multiple interpretations.”
Read more: Juha Pesonen homepage