Sanna Härkönen – Visual artist

This portfolio offers an overview of my works and projects. For the latest updates and current news, please visit my Instagram (sanna_harkonen).

Most works presented in this portfolio are available for sale.
For inquiries regarding availability, pricing, or exhibitions, please contact me via Instagram or email harkonen.sanna[at]gmail.com

Living Colour — exhibition at Galleria Toinen Silmä, April 2026

exhibition explores urban plants and everyday green environments through painting. The works are based on observations made outdoors and photographs taken in urban green spaces. A living installation of spring plants and cuttings brings nature directly into the gallery space alongside the paintings. Most of the works are painted in egg tempera, marking a shift in my practice towards tempera and watercolour from my earlier work in acrylic. The exhibition also includes a small number of works made with plant-based pigments.

The exhibition is accompanied by open drop-in workshops where visitors can try painting with plant-based inks, using the installation as inspiration.

City in Nature -exhibition in Galleria Kajava, February 2026

In this exhibition I work with observations made on site, photographs taken in urban green environments, and archival images. These serve as starting points for the paintings, shaping their atmosphere and subject matter. While rooted in real places and historical material, colour and the inherent unpredictability of painting transform each work into an independent interpretation, inviting viewers to pause and reflect on everyday natural environments

Look! Do you remember this? -exhibition in Gallery Corridor of the Kaisaniemi Greenhouses 7.10-30.11.2025

Exhibition explores how plants and gardens have been part of people’s everyday lives and shared moments, both in the past and today. The acrylic paintings in the exhibition are based on photographs of people in gardens and with plants, selected from the Helsinki City Museum’s Helsinkikuvia.fi archive. Interpretations of these archival photos are combined with my paintings in the Kaisaniemi Botanical Garden in autumn 2025.

Gouache and aquarel 2025

Drawings from Archival Photographs

I have used the Helsinki City Museum’s Helsinkikuvia.fi photo archive as the basis for several drawings and paintings. I am fascinated by the richness and diversity of this archive. It is intriguing to consider why photographers chose certain moments to capture, what they saw and deemed worth remembering.

My large charcoal drawings are based on photographs showing people in urban nature. The video series combines digital drawings inspired by archival images with video footage. It reflects the idea of siblings sharing the moments but remembering them differently. I have chosen images of shared everyday or festive moments, and added moving images of water, clouds, and rain to evoke the passage of time and the slow transformation of moments into history.