Yes, I do love to give my heroines, a very natural environment. I myself spent the best most memorable part of my childhood in woods and meadows in the countryside, even now I do my biggest most substantial part of work in the country surrounded by forests, it’s where I feel most in harmony with myself, it gives me space for reflection and it is always so beautiful. To me personally the nature symbolism is intuitive, free flowing, the right elements just find their proper place. I do not plan out my paintings intellectually in my head too much, and I don’t think a visual artwork should be read one strict direct one-dimensional symbol after another. I do not strive for blunt and straightforward communication through my paintings, I find it way more captivating if the meanings are open, complex and multi-layered, suggestive but not didactic. So yes, the individual symbols and implied meanings are open to interpretation.
In general, the lushness of nature, flowers, birds and overgrowth is in the very forefront of my work. We have forgotten that we are the nature, not something that interacts with it as an external and objectified thing out there. In some ways, in my painting I see nature equals to human emotions and states. I use it that way for my backgrounds and details. Violent seas and majestic clouds, warm summer sunshine and cool magical moonlight, forests to get lost in and misty swamps, and overgrown plants springing up around, in and from the human bodies – for my art I feel it’s like metaphorical, internal territories of a soul and deeply connected with the human heart, not simply places or objects.