Laura I. Kansanen-Stavale

I am an artist living in Helsinki Finland. I am originally a painter. I still paint but instead of oils, I paint photographs.

I have a passion for pictures, moments, visual stories and just looking around.
I like photos that breath, tell a story, have a life of their own. And I just love quick snapshots - randomness, chance, incident, occasion.
I like flaw.
That's my favourite art.

Portfolio

Portraits

Photo Journalism

Projects

Landscapes

Stock Photography

Artist's Statement

I am an artist living in Helsinki Finland. I am originally a painter. I still paint but instead of oils, I paint photographs.

My artworks are visual stories, fairy-tales and notes about my surroundings.

I want to make fiction into fact and fact in to fiction.
In spite of the story-like essence of my work I don't want to give any strict boundaries how to interpret them. I hope that the painting's final story is created in the viewers mind.

I am interested in polarities and their limits; common-private; figurative-non-figurative; when the surface becomes 3-dimensional space and 3-dimensional space becomes the surface. I am interested in the spatium.

Colour is a very important element for me. I often use strong, bright, intensive colours. I don't use colours to express my feelings, but a colour always contains an immediate, direct experience. My works have many layers both in the method of creating and in their contents.

For me, making art is much like researching. Researching myself, my past, my surroundings in a way that allows the hidden information, the unconscious to come forward. I want to combine experience and scientifical knowledge. I'm after directness and spontaniety both in expression and in obtaining information. Making art is a an effort to find a language which communicates directly without words, a language everybody has inside he/herself.

Favorite Photos (of mine)

Utata Member Page for Laura I. Kansanen-Stavale