Susanne Aaltonen

×

Expand

Susanne Aaltonen, “My Time With Her is Limited (1/2),” 2018

acrylic, graphite and family photograph on wood panel, 24” x 30” (courtesy the artist and Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary)

It’s often difficult to sense the identity of the people that Calgary-based artist Susanne Aaltonen paints – the figures are often shadowy affairs covered with gouged marks that resemble dripping rain or watery splashes. 

Aaltonen, who earned a BFA from the Alberta University of the Arts in 2016, begins by applying multiple layers of different coloured acrylic paint to a wooden panel. She then transfers an image from a blown-up family photo onto the painting’s surface and, after that, gouges down through the paint with carving tools to reveal the different colours buried below.

She has worked this way for several years, exploring not only modes of representation but also deeper personal issues. So it’s not surprising that her biography at the Paul Kuhn Gallery in Calgary, where an exhibition of her work opens Sept. 7, notes that her work confronts trauma and dysfunction in her family.

The gouges create energetic or emotional fields and the subjects’ gestures – tilting the head, hunching up the back or aiming a gun – take on new significance. The titles too, while opaque, bear weight: My Time With Her is Limited, He Doesn’t Mean It, Please Forgive Me For Not Telling You More.

×

Expand

Susanne Aaltonen, “Please Forgive Me For Not Telling You More(2/2),” 2019

acrylic, graphite and family photograph on wood panel, 24” x 30” (courtesy the artist and Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary)

Of course, many artists explore trauma in their work, sometimes without even realizing it. Trauma, consciously or unconsciously, probably helps account for the obsessive pursuit of certain themes or subjects. At times, artists even describe what they do as a form of psychotherapy or a spiritual practice that helps them cope with daily life.

But process and theme have a particularly interesting link with Aaltonen’s work. She is excavating – both literally as she carves, but also metaphorically as she processes her difficult experiences and tries to understand the intergenerational dynamics of her family. The show’s title, From Mustasaari, takes its name from the town in Finland where her grandmother was born.

“It’s all relatively along similar lines of trying to figure out feelings of things that I’ve lost, or things that I didn’t even have to begin with,” says Aaltonen. “And feeling lost myself and dealing with the sadness and the anger and the mourning and the questioning of all of those things. It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster through this last little bit.” 

×

Expand

Susanne Aaltonen, “He Watched as it was Happening,” 2019

acrylic, graphite and family photograph on wood panel, 30” x 24” (courtesy the artist and Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary)

She allowed her intuition to guide her as she worked on each piece, letting the emotions evoked by the photo and its backstory guide her decisions about where to gouge and how long to continue. For instance, in He Watched as it was Happening, in which she pictures herself, there’s relatively little gouging and she is easily recognizable.

“Initially, I was compelled to do it,” she says. “And then I realized I had a lot of anger that I was holding on to. Growing up, I resorted to numbing things and burying emotions and not dealing with things in a healthy way. 

“Through doing this, it was a way of revisiting these things that I didn’t know how to in any other method. I didn’t have to find the words for it … it was a way of literally digging through things. Once I would figure out one thing, it would unearth another thing. 

“Straining myself physically – because it is quite difficult to carve through an entire painting – it would almost break down those inner barriers that I have put up over the years.” 

Aaltonen says viewers respond to the emotion in her work, finding echoes of their own struggles and trauma.

At her exhibition earlier this year at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies in Banff, several people told her the paintings were haunting. 

“When faced with the ambiguity of not having a specific face for most of the paintings, they could project their own issues into the piece, and pick up the emotion, and then fill in their own back story, which I thought was really interesting.”  ■

Susanne Aaltonen: From Mustasaari is on view at the Paul Kuhn Gallery in Calgary from Sept. 7 to Oct. 5, 2019.

PS: Worried you missed something? See previous Galleries West stories here or sign up for our free biweekly newsletter