Push and Pull Painting

On the morning of my 40th birthday I found myself browsing the Internet, trying to find anti-aging creams for 40 something women. I do not use creams; in fact, I don’t think I currently even own one! It’s surprising and a bit intimidating how we internalize things – example things, that we consciously choose not to foster. Why am I mentioning this? Well, my current painting practice is very much concerned with the position of I in contemporary society, simultaneously harking back to my ancestral heritage and geopolitical origins. I was born in 1979 in the former Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, then part of the Soviet Union. My paintings/sculptures are created from dried layers of acrylic or household paint. I manipulate my work at different drying stages by scraping, folding, cutting, drawing into and building up. Some of my paintings are built up by collaborating collage techniques and traditional handcraft, such as basket weaving, knitting and crocheting. I choose my references quickly, working from a gut instinct; then I convert the selected image into what I loosely describe as a ‘painting’. These ‘paintings’ blur the boundaries between painting and skin. In these works, I seek to create a tension between the logic of ‘should’ and the logic of ‘play’. Creativity is in any case a game. It’s a leap in a certain way, I myself introduce several obstacles. If I make sure to leap in a certain way, I can arrive at something good. I try to use paint, not as it ‘should’ be used – a medium to be applied to a surface using specific tools – but as a form-able, tangible, almost sculptural medium ripe for manipulation. I am attracted to the neutral quality of paint, and its liquidity, finding it as responsive as clay. In several large-scale works using household paint, I use the infrastructure of paint as a surface and backing/canvas, pushing material to its limits. I understand that household paint decays – and loses the qualities that I value, but these qualities of it are too appealing and irresistible. They allow me to create sensual, all curved lines and skin-like material, papery thin and fragile or seductive as treacle but repulsive as a wound. They appear as ‘skins lifted off the surface of the painting’, magically suspended in mid-air, a merging of light, colour and gravity. But now, let’s go back to the morning of my 40th birthday. Judith Butler says: “The traumatic repetition of what has been foreclosed from contemporary life threatens the “I.