Ylläs Jazz Blues aims to showcase the nature, art, and culture of the northern region in all its forms. For this reason, the visual identity of Ylläs Jazz Blues 2025 has drawn its colors, shapes, and atmosphere from the stunning artwork “The light is burning and returning” by Äkäslompolo-based visual artist Riikka Jokiaho.
Painting, oil on canvas, 140 x 106 cm, 2014, privately owned
The artist talks about the genesis of the painting:
“The painting opens a view of one of the seasons and moments in the fell Ylläs as I experienced it.
I was most strongly influenced by the light, its variations and many different shades, and the lack of light in Lapland. The seasons and being at their mercy, the experiences of smallness, depression and rapture. This is why the painting is called ” Light returs and burns”, because it returning can be a burning, nearly cruel sensation, after the darkest weeks of winter, the dark sky pressing one’s nose into the turf and the snow on the ground. But there is also joy and humour… and the experience of walking in beauty.
Light is Burning and returning is a memory of the sensation of light on the ski trail on the Saaga side of Yllästunturi. After the arctic night, the first rays of sunlight hit the Äkäslompolo side of the fells at an angle, so that the skier on the Ylläsjärvi side of the slope, wondering, is momentarily bathed in a wonderful sensation of colour and light. Salmon-red and pink light colours the slope. For a moment, the landscape seems to be from another planet.
In my studio, the sensation and memory of that light was transformed into a painting that tells about how I felt skiing in beauty.”
My paintings are at the same time a play with color and visions about man and nature. They are a collage of visual experiences in nature, art history and visions of my own which come together and pile up as paintings. A picture, a painting mirrors my own being, my existence in the moment. It is visual evidence of how I see and feel my surroundings and how I filter this experience through my body in the movement of my hand.
The pleasure of painting is in thinking and spreading color: scratching, wringing, gently spreading, vaping, building up layers, looking, pondering it out of some surface. Driving force being restless movement of my hand, images, memories, stories, learned and gathered experience on the laws of painting, sensation of a colour.
Trees, flowers and bushes seem more than just plants in some quiet moment; they have a compelling presence and a light of their own. They and their habitats are at the mercy of humans, while they arebuilding all that we have, until we die and rot and become their food. Painting them is not only a search for beauty, light and presence, but also a tribute to the natural environment that keeps us and all other living things alive.
Riikka Jokiaho (b. 1966) is a visual artist and visual arts teacher. She lives and works in Äkäslompolo. You can see Riikka Jokiaho’s work at the festival and also beforehand at: https://riikkajokiaho.wixsite.com/riikkajokiaho
