Lapland is the Northern part of Finland above the Arctic Circle. It is where Santa Claus lives. Several Santa’s. I found my Santa in Rovenimieni where our plane landed before driving to the Artist Residency in Kemijärvi where my husband and photographer, David Vogel, who accompanied me, and I would stay for 5 weeks.

I applied to this residency as it was the one furthest North in Finland. I had seen pictures of the area and it spoke to me of lakes and open spaces, good inspiration for my reductive paintings. What surprised me as we drove the highway to Kemijärvi were the trees lining the road. Different types of forests with birch trees and evergreens predominating, their different heights telling me if they were third or fourth or more growth forests. The impressive thing visually was that this world appeared vertical to me and I had anticipated a horizontal minimal landscape.

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