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Vesa Kivinen combines oil painting, body painting, and nature photography to create a work of art that is several pieces and one piece simultaneously

Combining oil painting, body painting, and nature photography into richly complex layered works has been Vesa Kivinen's project for the last nine years. In that time, his work has been hailed as the "amongst the most integrally advanced in the history of Western abstraction," by by Michael Schwartz, Professor of the History and Philosophy of Art at Augusta State University. But Kivinen's layering is not confined to the canvas. His famous project with Bollywood superstar Veena Malik integrates the actress's personal and public life into his portraits of her, playing with pop culture as well as culture itself in thoughtful ways. If Kivinen's work is essentially modern in process, and his content concerned with the contemporary, his interest lies in transcendent truths, so much so that his personal philosophy occasionally overpowers his artwork. Kivinen describes Malik as someone "performing grace under tremendous pressure," and his portraits of her illustrate this.

Beginning of a New Era

Each of Kivinen's complex works is itself made up of multiple works, but the layering occurs in reverse as well. Progress photos taken of Kivinen's process are sold separately on his website in his Raw series and are considered their own complete pieces. The individual building blocks of a piece contribute to the whole, but exist simultaneously on their own. The beauty of Kivinen's work is that his pieces can exist at separate stages in time simultaneously, making portions of his portfolio a series of interrelated works that move forwards and backwards in time, imagining different possible transformations, and allow for different future possibilities.

Deciding which pieces can stand on their own and when an individual piece is done is doubly complicated because of the multiplicity of Kivinen's work. Of his Raw series, Kivinen tells Creators, it's difficult to allow the incomplete pieces to remain unedited and imperfect: "It's hard to try and learn to love the process as much as the end result... stopping at a pure moment is difficult for me," he says.

Elusive Obvious Raw

Take Me To California

Flower of Life

Check out Vesa Kivinen's other work on his website.

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If you resonate with what you have seen here, consider supporting this expression going far beyond political pamphlets and nonsensical shapes. If people knew how super human it is to make even a modest living as an artist and the real value of their contribution, much would change on a larger scale. It might just transform your whole life through what it can do for you. I’ve never received a public grant nor given funds from art institutions to do my work.

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