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 "A Dream of Happiness" (Unelma Onnesta)
It really isn’t bad for Oulu residents that Westerberg’s newest–completed in 2009 after the artist took an inspiring trip to America–are here to pep us up with their small, warm compositions in a Color Field style that brings you back to the sixties. It’s November. We need it. Westerberg (from Oulu originally) set out deliberately intending to give art fans a pleasant glow, or as she puts it, “bring colour and light into the gray darkness of winter.”
Despite such strong ties to the area, Westerberg’s artistic philanthropies would have never made it up here without Colmio owner Päivi Mikola, who can recognize a tonic when she sees it. When the gallery owner ran into the artist in Lohja, 100km from Helsinki, Mikola convinced her to pack up her paintings and head north. And according to Mikola, visitors to Colmio seem grateful. “People seem more cheerful and open visiting my gallery with Maija’s paintings on the wall,” she says.
Mikola’s gallery has been on the corner of Tuomi-talo, Oulu’s oldest stone apartment building, since 2003. The space has served as a showroom for Mikola's designer chairs and art like that of Westerberg. But if Colmio originated in the middle of the (cough) big city, the paintings currently pleasing its customers were made in Sammatti, a municipality of Lohja, where Westerburg has spent 35 years living in the countryside.
"I like to live a more self-sustained life," Maija declares. "I don't have any water pipes. I get my water with pails and heat up the house with wood." This lifestyle has influenced her work, she states–but not in the traditional sense. "For me, nature inspires more of a state of mind in my work than traditional images of countryside scenery.”
Staying with her friends in San Francisco for three months last winter also influenced the artist. Inspired to paint one of her favourites “Wandering, California” (Vaeltelua, Kalifornia), she says she ‘really enjoyed walking on the trails that lead between the cliffs and forests of California’s northern shore.”
“I’m attracted to the urban environment too, though,” states Westerberg. Before leaving for San Francisco in 2008, she spent her December in a studio with other artists in Helsinki, drinking at cafés, attending film festivals, and visiting galleries. “In the near future I could see myself working in New York for a year,” she continues.
For a pre-Christmas pick-me-up, you could do a lot worse than to visit Kajaaninkatu 25. Westerberg’s paintings may not beat a summer picnic on the sunny Oulu river, but they might give you a little taste.
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