I’ve wondered why certain places call me like a siren. When I was a child, we could go for a ride through the villages, sometimes ending up on the outskirts of the city. The main idea was to look at houses and dream. From the window of the car, as the speed makes the landscape hazy, I dream of houses beyond our reach and a different kind of life. Now as an adult, I’ve been looking for the Estonian archipelago region time and time again. The archipelago has attracted me in recent years, although I have never liked the sea as an element more. I’ve always enjoyed being alone, but on these trips I feel a particularly strong need to move by myself. I drive my car, which is about to fall apart, on dirt roads, knock on old boathouses, beaches, barely noticeable meadows, cemeteries and buildings, in the yards of which you can stumble upon hidden secrets. I don’t really need to know anything about these places. The information I need is in what I see.

In the periods between going places, I have dreams, almost awkwardly symbolic ones, of houses and rooms I didn’t know existed until I realized I could go everywhere. Once I’m startled when I realize that I’ve been living with the dead for weeks. The second night, parasite-ridden kittens climb out of the open window. Attractive, sometimes unsafe places attract me to a space where the subconscious begins to work and the artistic process starts.

In the exhibition, I have collected paintings that have been created as a result of going to places and the subsequent processing. Whether the center of the painting is a place or a figure, I always look for a shape and color that support the atmosphere. Sometimes everything happens quickly and feels easy, sometimes getting the right charge into a painting requires more time and running around and overcoming my own weakness. I believe that the function of attractive places – be they pleasant or unpleasant – is to make a person encounter something that is meaningful and important to him at that moment.

Silja Uuttula (b. 1988 in Savitaipale) is a painter who graduated from Vapaa Taidekoulu in 2022, who mainly works with oil paints and drawing. Fruits of Foreign Fields is his Fifth solo exhibition.