In 2025 I made several nice oil paintings. I thought I’d put a few pictures of my paintings here. It’s also nice to see how my painting technique has developed now that I have a couple of years of painting behind me.
This first one is a summery reed bed from the island where our summer cottage is. It radiates the warmth of summer and the glow of the sea. The surface of the water turned out really lively. If I remember right, this painting is a metre wide and 80 cm high. This painting is one of my own favourites.
I’ve painted several birch-themed paintings. This one is a birch grove I often look at in Korpikoski. It’s a skill of its own to be able to stop and see beautiful things even in everyday life. Often we don’t see beautiful things because our heads are buzzing with all sorts of thoughts, and we don’t notice the wonderful things in the present moment. In this moment, autumn has already progressed so far that the birch leaves have turned yellow. I’ve made three oil paintings of different sizes of these birches, and this is the largest of them. 1 m x 80 cm.
These two paintings were born as an experiment to see how well I could paint a landscape where the sea shows through the trees. One of them was the first draft on a cheap canvas, and the other was on a better-quality canvas. The idea was to do a test on an inexpensive canvas first and then the actual work on a better one. The view is from the porch of our summer cottage – once again an autumn landscape. I can’t say which of the paintings came first.
These sunflowers were painted over two days. On the first day, one of the paintings had a glass vase, but while painting the other I realised the flowers worked better without a separate vase. Luckily oil paint is forgiving in that you can wipe it off and cover it up fairly easily. One painting served as the model for the other. Many things get better when you take a little distance from them – and so it was here. On the second day the paintings got a little more stylising and were then finished.
This calm day is a view from Lake Korpijärvi. The cool colours of the painting even make it look a little like a winter landscape. Seen from further away, the reflection on the water works nicely in this small painting. We have several different paintings of this subject too. This Korpijärvi oil painting measures 33 x 23 cm.
Here is another small oil painting of Lake Korpijärvi. This time we’re back in more autumnal scenery. This view is directly across the water from the sauna. You can almost see the water flowing towards the Korpikoski rapids.
I’ve painted this pine in different seasons. This summery pine is a small and fairly simplified painting. For some reason this pine fascinates me – there will be many more versions of it…
I always find myself gazing at this valley while admiring the view over the Airisto. Here the autumn colours are beginning to glow, and the rowan berries shine red. This fairly large painting works better in real life than as a digital photo. Still, I believe the idea of the painting comes across in this picture too. I hope you can sense the last warmth of summer in it… At some point this painting will get a little retouching, as I don’t think some of its dark areas quite work right now.
At some point I’ll update the pages and the final painting will appear here.