Respect for nature through art and farming
The Finnish artist Osmo Rauhala manages to divide his year between organic farming deep in rural Finland and an artist's life in New York. He says that at the heart of the two seemingly very different ways of life there is a common cycle of beginning, growing and maturing.
Osmo Rauhala is a cosmopolitan artist. There is no overt Finnish frame of reference in his art, but there are deep echoes of what the analyst in him identifies as the Finn’s history of living in the middle of woods. That is how he has lived and continues live on his farm. Living in the middle of woods teaches one to respect nature.Simultaneously with stretching his artistic wings in New York Osmo Rauhala has stretched his wing as an organic farmer in Finland. He is an organic farmer by conviction, deeply worried about the growing chemicalisation of the world, including farming.
Neither art, nor farming knows office hours, Osmo Rauhala says. Dependence on light is another thing art and farming have in common. There is certain wholeness to them as well, the artist reflects. The artist always makes a new start in priming his canvas. Similarly, the farmer makes a new start in ploughing his field.
“The recurring image of the deer in my art re-echoes the art of our ancestors. The need to understand our place and role in nature has not changed over the millennia. All people share it. We Finns seek our place in the woods, other do it in the desert or on a sheet of ice. Ultimately, we all face the same question: Where do we come, where are we going, and why?”
BY RISTO PITKÄNEN
PHOTOS BY SEPPO SAMULI
