SINIKKA TUOMINEN (1947-2024) - In the Wake of the Wandering Eye

301. SINIKKA TUOMINEN (1947-2024), Summer curtain, estimate 2500€

 

The painter Sinikka Tuominen (1947–2024) worked throughout her life mainly in her home city of Oulu and at her summer residence on the island of Hailuoto. Yet her significance as a visual artist gained increasing recognition across the Nordic countries. In 1995, Tuominen was awarded the Finland Prize by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, and in 1996 she was nominated for the Ars Fennica, Finland’s most prestigious art prize. In 2000, she was nominated for the Carnegie Art Award, established for Nordic painters. In addition, Tuominen received the Finnish Art Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016 and, in 2019, the Prince Eugen Medal, awarded by the King of Sweden to distinguished Nordic visual artists.

Sinikka Tuominen’s artistic career began promisingly after she graduated from the School of the The Fine Arts Academy of Finland in 1974. Until the mid-1980s, Tuominen’s expressive paintings, executed with broad brushstrokes, were strongly rooted in the expansive landscape of Northern Ostrobothnia. A decisive turn towards abstraction and non-representational art took place with her solo exhibition at Galleria Bronda in Helsinki in 1988, preceded by a couple of productive months working at a residency in Paris. With this transformation, the physical landscape almost entirely disappeared as a subject, while stronger contrasts entered her practice. These manifested themselves in large-scale works in which two distinct modes of painting coexist in dialogue: a more gesturally painted section and a more drawing-like one.

From the 1990s onwards, Sinikka Tuominen’s works became highly recognisable and distinctly her own. The abstract paintings, often as tall as the artist herself, combine exuberance and spontaneity with a systematic order based on repetition. In these paintings, shaped by the interplay of conscious action and intuition, forms swarm, cluster and multiply. The inventiveness and layering of details and variations of form are not easily captured in words, yet it is clear that Tuominen possessed her own vocabulary and language, one that could be fully realised only through painting. 

When beginning a new work, Sinikka Tuominen did not have a precise preconceived plan, but she needed to have an idea and a vision of the painting’s colour. The underlying, often watercolour-like fields of colour were created through vigorous gestures. From there, large basic shapes and forms carried the work forward. Halfway through the process, Tuominen would turn to smaller brushes in pursuit of a more subtle mark. At the same time, she considered the relationships between the various elements and how they were emphasized. Decades of working brought fluency to the process. Tuominen noted that she could draw upon the lessons and recollections of her earlier works – as though a larger image lay behind her, while at the same time providing a path along which to proceed.

Sinikka Tuominen’s works are held in numerous Finnish art museums and public collections. She also executed several public commissions. Tuominen’s spouse was the sculptor and painter Reijo Hukkanen (1946–2024).

 

Text:
Elina Vieru
Intendent, The Oulu Museum and Science Centre