ELINA MERENMIES’s extensive oeuvre is a unique and mystical universe. A rich and layered array of meanings, emotions and recurring motifs come together in her works, executed in the artist’s precise, inimitable hand with tempera, oil and ink. In those works we encounter Merenmies’s rich inner world and its diverse, captivating and poignant characters. The images are indisputably regardful and sincere, with interior visions and experiences running parallel with everyday observations. Human understanding and sensitivity for the complexity of life have a strong presence. Merenmies’s works can be approached as gates to silence and the ultimate essence of being human. Merenmies has a great capacity for empathy: she knows and understands human fear, anxiety and loneliness, but her works never express desperation – only hope.
Elina Merenmies (b. 1967, Espoo) lives and works in Helsinki. She has works in major public collections in Finland and in several Nordic art museums, including ARKEN Museum for Moderne Kunst, The Gothenburg Museum of Art, The Finnish State Art Collection, Sara Hildén Art Museum, La Maison Rouge and Uppsala Art Museum, as well as in private collections in Europe and the United States. She has shown her work in numerous exhibitions in recent years, including Amos Rex Art Museum, Helsinki; HAM Helsinki Art Museum; Turku Art Museum; Nordiska Akvarellmuseet, Stockholm; Norrköping Art Museum and Serlachius Museum, Mänttä. Since 2020, she has worked as the headmaster of the Free Art School in Helsinki.