Tiiu Pallo-Vaik loves nature, water and land. As already the poetic title of the exhibition is referring, the artist seems to be walking on her water-colours on the border of land and water, verging once towards one side, then towards the other one. Still, the number of the received ideas from the both sides is equal. The same unexplainable feeling makes the artist reach out for the brush both in Venice, the city of canals and in Estonian pine forest.

 

Painting, as being in the nature, is for Tiiu Pallo-Vaik a meditative activity, which she is clearly enjoying. For the creative process she needs time, peace and quiet. The artist paints long and thoroughly – the accomplishment of one work may take weeks.

Pallo-Vaik works in turns both by creating oil paintings and water-colours. She values water-colours in the first range because of their unexpected character, which is abundant with nuances. While applying the colours on the paper one can never be sure, from which point they start to create their own landscapes while flowing in streams or how the works look after the last bush strike. In the fragility and transparency of the water-colours by Pallo-Vaik is also reflected the emotional and spiritual contents of her works. Painting and listening to the flowing waters is a necessity for the artist, without which she just can not function and she also emphasizes the importance of this necessity to the viewers.

 

At the exhibition„Maa ja vee piiril” („On the border of land and water”) are being exposed water-colours that were accomplished during the period 2001-2007. The poetic and narrative titles of the works ask the art lover to wander on the footpaths that the author has already walked on – in historical Rome, romantic Venice and naturally beautiful åland. Among the recognizable places it is possible to detect also landscapes that have been created on the basis of the artist’s own perceptions and memory flashes. Still, the author does not want to burden the viewer with excessive information, leaving the latter sufficiently interpretation freedom by the means of abstract language of painting.

 

Starting from mid1990ies, Tiiu Pallo-Vaik introduced into her water-colours the collage technique, to which she has remained true even by today. By using pieces and idea fragments from her previous works, the artist gives the painting surface its structure. The relation between the integral and transparent base painting and paper surfaces that have been glued onto it is a symbolic expression of water and land. The water-colours by Pallo-Vaik are collages of ideas. On the works meet actual motifs and dreamy fantasy worlds. If the pictures may seem to the viewer at the first glance abstract, the works still have clear motifs and fragments from certain sources. The more experienced eye detects an ancient palazzo wall, wearing the signs of time or a window, opening into a stranger’s back yard. For the artist is not of essential importance the recording of physical space, but rather the interpretation into painting language of perceptions, having been set free on the basis of the moods of a moment. This is the will that is living in all of us – the aspiration to share even obliviously with the world one’s own impressions both from the nearby street corner and from between the walls of the distant Colosseum.