Ancient Rover

This is a digital edition of my painting Ancient Rover from a series of four paintings called Circles. Circles was first presented as a virtual exhibition in regards to the COVID-19 pandemic. The whole series including the gallery and soundtrack were tokenized as a whole experience and now the works are made here as individually collectable NFT's.

Circles is a series of four abstract paintings which are based heavily on color experience. With each painting I have been working with one of four themes of the series; loss, letting go, new beginnings and new meanings. I had a very ritualistic approach to the process of painting and there is a strong spiritual and conceptual side to it. I've used paint differently with each piece reflecting on the themes i was working with. The paints themselves I mixed by hand from raw pigments, which for me represented taking ownership of personal experience, that was to be transformed into something shareable and healing. In my mind these paintings make certain kind of archetypes -or giants, as i sometimes like to call them, which together create a tacit story arc.

Ancient Rower second painting in the series and it is about letting go. Unlike loss, this is a voluntary process, and something that can take very long time before we are ready to do it. May it be a grudge, a relationship, job or a position, what ever is holding us from living true to our selves. I painted and washed the canvas in gesture few times. I thought it would be done quickly, but quite fittingly it was much harder to finish this than i expected. Early thoughts were with heavy waters of River of Tuoni, in kingdom of the dead, from the Finnish epic Kalevala, but it came together after i learnt that in some Arthurian myths, Morgan Le Fay who was often the nemesis of King Arthur, ferries him to the island of Avalon to heal after he gets wounded in battle.

Details of the original painting:

Ancient Rover oil on canvas 195x180cm 2020