Stillness Under Snow—A Winter in Finland

May 28

There is a particular kind of stillness that belongs to a northern winter. During my artist residency in Finland in 2024, I would take long walks without encountering another soul for miles. The lake lay frozen and motionless, bare branches reached into the pale winter sky, and the only sounds came from birds calling somewhere in the distance. There was something almost magical about the silence, as though the landscape had momentarily suspended time. I found myself slowing down, observing more closely, and becoming increasingly aware of the beauty in what was absent.

That same stillness followed me into the studio. I felt it in the early morning light, and perhaps most profoundly in those fleeting moments just before sunset, when the landscape seemed to soften into something almost otherworldly. Those quiet hours stayed with me long after I returned home. Rather than attempting to depict what I had seen, I wanted to translate what I had felt—the openness, the silence, the subtle shifts in light, and the extraordinary sense of space.

Shortly after my residency, three paintings emerged: Hidden Within, Time Found Again, and When Everything Subsided. I worked on all three simultaneously, and they came together with an ease and fluidity that felt almost instinctive. There was no hesitation, no struggle to find their direction. My mind and hands seemed to be on the same frequency. Through restrained geometric forms, subtle repetition, and carefully considered negative space, the paintings became an expression of the stillness I had experienced. Each developed its own quiet presence, yet together they formed a deeply connected body of work.

Looking back, I realize that Finland offered me something far beyond visual inspiration. It was an experience of stillness that felt both physical and deeply personal, one that continues to resonate in my practice today. It reminded me that silence is not necessarily an absence of something, but a space in which something else can emerge.

Where northern silence takes shape.

Allison Rietta

Allison Rietta is a Toronto-based abstract artist whose work explores mystic geometry as a language of energy, rhythm, and perception. She began her full-time artistic practice in 2020 following a 25-year career as a creative director in branding and marketing within the graphic design industry. Rietta holds an honours degree in Environmental and Industrial Design from the Ontario College of Art and Design, and furthered her studies through the Turps Painting School (2022–23).

Drawing on her spiritual practice of meditation and sound healing, Rietta’s work is informed by the resonant qualities of sacred sound and the symbolic structures of geometry found in nature and architecture. Through repetition, layering, and variation, her compositions translate vibration into visual form, where colour, shape, and pattern function as carriers of rhythm and inner experience. Her practice moves between precise, structured arrangements and more intuitive, atmospheric fields, reflecting a dialogue between control and fluidity, and between inner and outer perception.

Rietta has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Toronto, New York, London (UK), and Basel (Switzerland). She has been twice longlisted for the Jackson’s Painting Prize (UK) and shortlisted for the Visual Art Open International Emerging Artist Award. Her work is held in private and public collections, including a major acquisition by the Holbrook Danville boutique hotel in the United States. Her work has also been featured in CasaFacile, one of Italy’s leading interior design publications.

https://www.allisonrietta.com

Stillness Under Snow—A Winter in Finland

From One—The Evolution of a Single Drawing

The Shape of Resonance