Eemil Karila explores the fragile and interdependent relationship between human beings and the natural world — a connection in which we are both participants and wanderers. His work invites reflection on our place within a larger living network, where boundaries between human and nonhuman, subject and landscape, begin to blur.
In Karila’s paintings, trees, plants and meadows are not mere motifs, but living presences embodying the energy of the landscape and becoming its silent storytellers. The dialogue between colour and light creates a rhythm that reflects the constant movement of nature and the presence of life in all its forms. Karila’s artistic thinking draws from post-anthropocentric and socio-ecological perspectives, imagining a world in which humanity is part of a diverse and interconnected biosphere. Karila challenges the traditional hierarchies of depicting nature and seeks a form of connection based not on control, but on sensitivity and listening. The landscape functions as a space for remembering and experiencing. The horizon is not just a distant boundary, but something that shifts and is reconstructed through experience. Past places become part of the present, forming a constantly changing, layered whole.
Karila compares his method of painting to gardening: after watering, the colours grow on the wet brown linen canvas like seeds from soil. He paints directly onto unprimed linen, to which he first applies copious amounts of water, and then paints with tempera and ink on the wet surface. Once the fabric has dried, he applies paint in thick brushstrokes, and then adds oil paint on top of that using sticks and his fingers.
Eemil Karila’s career includes more than 30 solo exhibitions and numerous collective exhibitions around the world, for instance, in Germany, Estonia, Sweden, Brazil and Venezuela. Karila, who previously lived in Berlin, has since returned to his old hometown of Rovaniemi. His works are in the collections of Rovaniemi and Tampere Art Museums, Wihuri Foundation, Aune Laaksonen, Tornio’s Aine Art Museum, the Miettinen Collection in Berlin, among others.
