Maaria Märkälä (born 1964) is a landscape painter whose paintings are inspired by her own everyday life and trips abroad. For Märkälä, the entire painting process is a form of slow travel.
Märkälä’s characteristic pink and green rhododendrons have recently started to be accompanied by lights at the edges of darknesses. While painting, Märkälä has thought about the night that she spent sleeping under the stars in a desert and how sailors used to navigate with the help of the stars.
She has thought about the starry sky and how light pollution is changing the world, causing insect populations to decline, disrupting the natural rhythm of both people and animals and decreasing the production of ‘the darkness hormone,’ melatonin. Light pollution also makes space and the stars almost impossible to observe.
Märkälä paints in layers and wants to paint light on top as a reminder of the good aspects and beauty of life.
Maaria Märkälä has studied at the Pekka Halonen Academy and the Free Art School. She has held numerous private exhibitions in Finland and abroad, including Germany and Estonia, in addition to which she has contributed to group and joint exhibitions in both Finland and abroad, including Portugal, France, Hungary and Brazil. Märkälä’s works are included, among others, in the Finnish State Art Collection and the Finnish National Gallery Collection, HAM Helsinki Art Museum’s collection and many private collections in Finland and abroad.