Marika Rosenius (Born 1965)

Marika Rosenius (born 1965 in Helsinki, Finland ) is a visual artist who lives and works in Zürich, Switzerland. She is highly inspired and deeply touched by the complexity, the chaotic order and the beauty in Nature. Not only the endless forests of her native Finland but also her studies in cabinetmaking in London very much intensified her admiration and respect for wood. As a self-taught painter she has managed to combine her passion for wood together with painting and found an authentic and personal style to express herself.

In her belief, wood retains the spirit of the living tree and in her artworks she wants to honour this. Her works resembles traditional paintings, yet on closer inspection the surface has a rich and illusory texture. Marika "draws" with her saws and chisels on wooden boards, transforming the marks and scratches into a botanical fantasy.
Guided by the grains in the wood, she first works very intuitively, letting her numerous tools initiate the process and simply respond to what develops. The wood shavings still attached to the boards very much leads the progress of each work. A painterly touch is achieved by adding several layers of earthy tones of acrylic paints and pigments.

She hopes that the viewer of her art will slow down and take a moment to connect with her forests and landscapes, observing the contrasts between density and airiness, between spontaneity and reflection and between realism and abstraction. Her aim is to generate a sense of meditative calmness in her works… far away from the world of digital algorithms…