Joa Korhonen

Joa Korhonen is known for a long and respected career as a musician. Altogether nine albums by his main band SARA, as well as an album by Meadow Island, and a trilogy of EP's as part of Pedestrian's Motor have largely been written by Korhonen. Over the past 15 years Korhonen used songwriting as his main vessel to transfer and transmit emotions and emotional landscapes.

Still everything could not be said. A need for an alternative vessel reinforced.

Alongside his music Korhonen has constantly worked on visual arts not only for his own amusement, but also for the cover art of his album releases as well as other visual components of his bands and musical projects. Becoming active as a painting artist was a natural channel for artistic expression while SARA decided to take a break from touring and recording.

Paintings of faces and abstract pieces started to surface. Intuitively at first, even randomly or by accident. The paintings started out from rough and partial sketches which Korhonen calls suggestions:

"A suggestion of an eye, for example, might suddenly surface. The strokes often were almost random. Vision started to focus and depth appeared to quickly build into the work, a layer by layer. In my own opinion, my best works ar...

Self-taught

2022 HUMAN, Galleria A2, Helsinki

2021 HUMAN, Muusa, Tampere

2021 MONO, Ääniä Festivaali, Äänekoski

2020 Clairvoyants / Selvännäkijät, Helsinki, Paja & Bureau

2019 Subconscious Creatures / Alitajunnan olennot, Vaasan kaupunginkirjasto

2018 Earthlings, Kyrö Distillery Gallery