MARIA FORSBLOM

I´m an artist with a residence, a history and a past.    

 

In my youth I had to forget my dream about working as an fine art artist. Lama- the economic brake down in Finland in 1990 formed my generation. I became a nurse, a wife and a mother. 

 

My journey back to becoming an artist started in 2009 by a word from a stranger.  Four years later I found myself studying fine art in Novia beside my work as a Public health nurse. To finish my studies I gave up my secure life and quit my employment. 
I graduation in 2016 and I have worked fulltime as an Artist in my own studio since. 

As artist I have worked with textile as my main medium. Not as an textile artist but as a fine art artist using textile as medium, colour and voice. The abstract three dimensional textilework has become my signature.  

In my work I try to translate feelings and the human mind into textile.   
The work with textile is working with all the senses. The process itself is important. The craft in dyeing, the power of tearing, the meditative work of winding the strips, adjusting to the feeling in a contemplative set of mind. To create the work by using single strips, the line of life, have become my way of creating. 

As an artist my language is quiet but firm, intense but not demanding. If you are willing to feel, willing to sense the art can take you on a inner journey. If you´re not willing to sense, willing to feel you will see just a work consisting of colour, contrast, line and composition.  

Im not a Artist with much to say about the politics, economy or environment. Life it selves has given me the subject. The grand mystery of life, the paradoxes- the fragility and beauty. In my past I have experienced lost, grieve, burnout, heard more stories about the true life, than the most of us. Life is still a paradox- eteria and body, transparency and impenetrably.  

 

The material is important. The used textile, that carry its own story, the softness, the worn materials feeling and structure. By dyeing in rust, burning and tearing the material becomes a palette of life on my worktable.  

 
In one way my thoughts are general, a reality for us all.  Still it´s hard to recognize the whisper of life in our time.  Yet it is important to define, declare and to speak the unspoken words.   To visualize the mind and the feelings has become my main goal.  

In 2018 I  had a work grant from the Finnish culture foundation. My main task was to examine how art can be used as a strengthening power in public spaces where people often find themselves small, scared and unsecure.  

As a former nurse my angle is slight different than the main artist. Because I have seen the eyes wander to the window, seeking comfort, when the patient has told me about theirs lost, fear and pain. I have seen the consolation in the small card on the wall, when I examined they´re body.

 
If a window or a small card can give comfort - what can a piece of art do?  

My interest is not in therapy, not in the health care, neither in design. My interest is in the human and the humans visual intelligence. My question is: How can I as a artist convey / translate comfort, trust, hope, to the human mind in a abstract three dimensional textile artwork. 

My aim is to create art for public spaces, especially for social- and healthcare units, schools and sacred spaces .
 
 My residence is my family, my history is yet untold, my past I stand upon. I´m an artist with a voice.