Colour and light and a feeling - they are most important aspects in Elvi Rangell’s art work. All this lightness and sensitive play with colours is vividly demonstrated in her first solo exhibition ”The Reality of Illusion” in ArtDepoo gallery in Tallinn. The colours come from deep within her, they change from work to work, depending on her own feelings and emotions. Gallerist Eeva Pinomaa has described Elvis’s paintings as gentle poems of colour with hints of something familiar. But “the more time one spends at her painting, the more it leads the viewer to discover elements, lines and reflections of one’s own emotional reactions and aesthetic sensations. The painting will start a life of its own.”

Artist Elvi Rangell and art friend Heikki Ylonen
Photo: Annika Haas/Eesti Ekspress

In her first solo exhibition Elvi Rangell presents a set of her newest paintings, in which she studies reality and what lies behind the real. The contrast between what can be seen and what is hidden is the essence in Elvi Rangell’s paintings. In these works she has first painted a picture – maybe a landscape, maybe flowers, maybe just a frame of mind, and then painted over it another painting but still leaving some traces of the world of ideas she started with. The painting technique is time consuming with a lot of different layers, that in some cases are apparent and in some cases just hints of what may lie underneath the surface opening only when studying the picture with a curious mind.

The Minister of Justice of Finland Tuija Brax, Elvi Rangell and The Minister of Justice of Estonia Rein Lang
Photo: Annika Haas/EE

Elvi Rangells’ paintings live their own life and speak the language of their own, so the artist herself does not want to explain her works in any other way than giving the series a theme ”The Reality of Illusion”. She feels very strongly that when she has finished a painting and it has left her studio, it becomes the possession of the viewer who will give the painting its meaning. While painting, she gets totally absorbed in the process. When finished, she needs time to get to know the painting, to study it and get a feeling of it before she is able to let it go.

Elvi Rangell has participating in group exhibitions since 2005, and she has already found a way of painting that is characteristic for her – very controlled brush strokes giving way to  soft and more sensual way of painting. The colours appear and disappear at will and the viewer will decide what she or he has seen and experienced.

Gallerists Eeva Pinomaa, Olga Temnikova and Maris Takk
Photo: Annika Haas/EE