Summer poem

I shall not dress my child
in silk.

These ragged trousers and that washed-out shirt
are what she wears, they do not hurt the eye,
nor do they differ from the waters’, the trees’, the roads’,
the country’s ragged joy
and beauty.

Beware of silk, my blossomfingered child.
Go press your cheek against rough bark.
You are its sister.

—Eila Kivikk’aho, 1951, translated from Finnish by Anne Fried, 1981.

My painting is a visual interpretation of a poem written by the Finnish poet Eila Kivikk’aho. The speaker in her poem is someone who is yearning for a childlike relationship with nature: an innocent and prescientific, uncomplicated and harmonious, even animistic way of perceiving nature and positioning ourselves in relation to the non-human natural world. In my painting, a dress made of tree bark represents this kind of relationship. But there is a tragedy in Kivikk’aho’s poem: only a child can wear a bark dress. The speaker of the poem addresses her imaginary child knowing that she will never be able to (re)attain such an effortless relationship with nature herself. That is why I wanted to paint the child as if we, as spectators, are interrupting her, getting a glimpse into her private world. The child in the bark dress is a fantasy, sweet but unattainable.