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In 2017, Petri Ala-Maunus began creating daily self-portraits as a break from landscape painting. What started as a private, diary-like practice grew quietly over time, largely unplanned. Over the past nine years, he has filled a sizeable collection of sketchbooks with experimental self-portraits in a wide range of techniques. In recent years, he has devoted each sketchbook to a specific technique or concept: one, for example, the right-handed artist has drawn entirely with his left hand. These self-imposed restrictions serve as exercises, helping him stay motivated. Ala-Maunus has said that if he ever misses a day, the project will end there.

From the very first self-portrait, he has marked each image with the date and a serial number. Later, he began adding notes about where the portrait was made or about significant events of the day. Despite personal tragedies and calamitous global events, everyday life has gone on – and the sketchbooks have continued to fill, one at a time.

Each self-portrait can be read as a window into a specific moment. What was happening in the world when the artist sketched himself? What movements of the mind does the gaze conceal – or reveal?

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The landscapes painted by Mauno Markkula and Petri Ala-Maunus are not depictions of observed reality. They are imagined vistas, where the natural world merges with the artists’ emotional states and inner visions. When Ala-Maunus began working on the Blazing Sky exhibition, he undertook a close study of Markkula’s paintings and the texts written about him. He has spoken of his surprise at how many aspects of the late landscape painter felt familiar and deeply relatable.

For this exhibition, Ala-Maunus created twenty-nine new landscapes, each inspired directly by Markkula’s work. The paired paintings share identical titles, setting up a dialogue across time between two artists from different eras.

Viewed side by side, the works do seem to speak to one another. The basic forms of Markkula’s landscapes are echoed in Ala-Maunus’s reinterpretations. Their colours and painterly styles differ, but something essential endures. And the atmosphere – does it shift as we move from one landscape to the next?

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Petri Ala-Maunus painted his first landscape in 1997. Through this practice, he discovered a renewed interest in old art. A self-avowed admirer of the technical virtuosity of the old masters, Ala-Maunus describes himself as deliberately disrupting the established conventions of the landscape genre. He roams outdoors, photographing nature, but also draws from the endless flow of digital imagery. Often, he constructs his compositions from printed images, combining fragments that have lingered in his mind to create entirely new realities. His work is devoted to the pursuit of the ideal landscape – a vision that seeks to surpass even nature itself.

Ala-Maunus is known for monumental landscapes that almost overwhelm the viewer with their intensity. Measuring four metres wide, Übernatur merges snow-capped mountains, lush forests, and the menacing atmosphere of an imminent volcanic eruption. While his early landscapes included human figures, later works are strikingly devoid of people. As we observe these scenes, we are left to wonder: do these landscapes belong to a time before humans, or do they depict a post-human world?

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Mauno Markkula expressed his inner world through colour. He painted from imagination, using nature as a raw source of inspiration. As art historian Hilja Roivainen has noted, Markkula’s paintings have been described as intense colour visions, where colour and light together create a cosmic tension. Contemporary critics often called his colours garish or exaggeratedly emotional, though some also admired their lyrical harmony.

In both palette and handling of light, Lit Tree is more serene than Markkula’s fiery sunsets. Still, the bright red tree trunk stands in sharp contrast to the paler shades of the background and the muted foreground. A vivid blue sky adds further tension, serving as a counterpoint to the red, while the vigorous brushwork animates the scene throughout.

The painting belongs to the Leonard and Katarina Bäcksbacka Collection, donated in 1976 to the Helsinki City Museum, the precursor of HAM, Helsinki Art Museum. Leonard Bäcksbacka was an important patron of Markkula and regularly exhibited his work at his Konstsalongen Gallery on Helsinki’s Bulevardi.

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Mauno Markkula sought knowledge and inspiration by travelling to Central Europe, particularly Paris. Each day, he visited art museums and studied the local architecture. His letters home offer fascinating insights into his experiences abroad.

In the early 1950s, Markkula wrote to his patron, the gallerist Leonard Bäcksbacka, noting that the art on display in Parisian museums had a fruitful influence on the Nordic imagination. He described painting imaginary visions in Paris as effortless – everything around him already seemed so picturesque. After the initial excitement, however, his letters took on a more sombre tone. Unaccustomed to the dusty streets of a large city, he longed for the light of Helsinki, which he described as crisp and logical. While Parisian architecture inspired him, he found the city’s natural environments sparse and tame.

Over time, the long journeys he undertook on foot or by metro began to take their toll. Even crossing a street seemed to sap his energy and inspiration. By then, he felt he had seen enough and gathered sufficient memories to work from for the summer, adding a quiet wish to leave the bustle of Paris behind and return to Helsinki.

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Petri Ala-Maunus’s painting The Last Will was commissioned as the cover illustration for the novel Ylva by musician and author Marko Annala. The novel is set in 1980s Norway – the birthplace of black metal.

Ala-Maunus’s art is deeply influenced by both Norway’s mountainous landscapes and the aesthetics of heavy metal. Growing up amid the flat plains of South Ostrobothnia, the young artist dreamed of one day visiting a place of rugged natural grandeur. Album cover art offered a gateway to fantasy worlds: set against the subdued fields of his childhood, metal record covers presented electrifying visions of erupting volcanoes and untamed wilderness. As an adult, those distant dreams became reality when Ala-Maunus travelled to the mountains of Norway and Central Europe – journeys that left a lasting imprint on his landscape paintings.

To this day, music remains an integral part of his creative process, and he habitually listens to playlists while he works. While preparing for the Blazing Sky exhibition, music often filled his studio – from folk, rock, and pop to heavy metal, with occasional strains of electric organ and reggae.