Various: Blow Out Your Candles, Laura (II); It's All Now You See; and Nobody Knew My Rose Reference Image

Finnish artist Anna Tuori works primarily in oil paint to create images that captivate the viewer, drawing them into a fictional world of whimsy and imagination. Presented at Carriageworks, her three new works included in the 19th Biennale of Sydney (2014) – It’s All Now You See; Nobody Knew My Rose; and Blow Out Your Candles, Laura (II) (all 2013) – are united in their depiction of a barren snowy landscape, with the inclusion of a structure in which to shelter from the cold. A human presence is hinted at with the odd smudged handprint, or through splotches of paint in anthropomorphic shapes, dotted here and there. On the surface, her paintings appear innocent – fairytale scenes in candyfloss colours – but there are secrets in these forests; all is not as it first seems.

For Tuori, her landscapes are not merely fantasies, but fantastical realities. With space for the viewer to project their own emotions and reach intuitive interpretations, each painting is like a portrait of the human mind. Every visitor will see something different, based on their personal experiences and memories. Tuori’s suggestive paintings provide a kind of visual puzzle, which, neuroscientists have recently informed us, the creative parts of the human brain enjoy and employ. Tuori’s titles may be borrowed from literature, her thoughts informed by theory, but her work is above all a visual and perceptive experience. Like children making out compositions in the clouds, so too will the attentive viewer recognise their own associations in Tuori’s brush marks.

Tuori is interested in the concept of the ‘unheimlich’, or ‘uncanny’; the point at which the familiar starts to become strange. The longer one stands before one of her paintings, the more one gradually begins to see. Her dreamlike environments appear almost on the threshold of being recognisable, but details are hard to make out through the washes of paint.

In Blow Out Your Candles, Laura (2010), Tuori uses a wide brush and thin washes of paint to create a background that suggests an atmospheric sky and a landscape swathed in white. A delicately rendered tree trunk frames the image, lending perspective to a snowy vignette that hovers against a dark background like a secret window into an unknown fairytale. A small cottage is visible in the background, leading the viewer to wonder who might live in this imaginary world. Tuori allows space in her paintings for the audience to imagine their own story.

In Some Remain So (2012) a rollercoaster can be seen in the distance, but no people are visible in the snowy landscape. In the foreground of the image a shovel is stuck in the ground, casting a lonely shadow against the snow. The absence of humanity lends an eerie sense of silence to the otherwise serene and beautiful setting. When they do appear, as in I Called on You (2012), Tuori’s human figures are painted in a ghostly manner with indistinct features, almost as though she is welcoming us to imagine ourselves as the protagonist on the other side of the picture frame.

Tuori completed her studies at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, and the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions, including ‘Anna Tuori: Paintings’, Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova, Turku (2012); ‘Anna Tuori: Paintings’, Russian Academy of Fine Arts Museum, St Petersburg (2012); ‘Some Remain So’, Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve, Paris (2012); ‘Tell You Later, Dear’, Galerie Anhava, Helsinki (2011); and ‘Blow Out Your Candles, Laura’, Helsinki City Art Museum and Tampere Art Museum (2011). She has participated in numerous international group exhibitions, including ‘Tartuntapintoja’, Oulu Museum of Art (2012); ‘Trial & Error’, Galleri Bo Bjerggaard, Copenhagen (2010); ‘Different Realities’, Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm (2009); and ‘Ars Fennica: Finnish Art Now’, Scandinavia House, New York (2007). In 2011, she was the recipient of the Tampere Art Museum Young Artist of the Year award.

Anna Tuori, Nobody Knew My Rose, 2013, acrylic and oil on board, 213 x 305 cm. Courtesy the artist