In her paintings, Hanna Kanto (b.1981 Tornio, Finland) examines questions related to our existence, both on a personal and general level, through the relationship between humans and nature. Through her wryly humorous figures and drops of sweat, Kanto is able to depict this endless search for one’s own place in the reality of our time.
The setting of Hanna Kanto’s paintings is located in a Finnish forest. With it, she wants to take a stand on the forest debate of our time, which is colored by ecological, ideological and economic motives. The ethos of physical work and the northern forest are strongly intertwined in her world of experience. The main material behind her artistic work is her own observations and experiences in a family of forest owners and avid berry pickers. Working at the sawmill, planting seedlings, clearing brushwood, chopping trees, hiking, picking berries and mushrooms plays an important roll of her artistic work.
Kanto’s way of painting is experimental and she explores its possibilities by using a wide range of different paint materials. She strives to create a tense and interesting relationship between the surface and the image through different glosses, structures, colors and compositions.