Hanna Kanto has the minimalistic and inhospitable Lapponian landscape and its people as reference points for her art. Norrland follows as a red thread through her creative process. To live and participate in the local industry is a part of her work.
To her the northern Sweden is a place of strong contrasts – dark winter nights and thousands of stars, magical summer nights with swarms of mosquitoes, deserted houses, unemployment, magic and nostalgia. Kanto wanders through the norrlänska landscape, skis in the mountains and breathe the polar wind. The process then continues in her studio where she defines her place in the totality over and over again. She explores and study’s herself in the landscape, how it is to live and dwell as a woman in Norrbotten. Kanto has a unique figurative language where she expands the Nordic reality, in a way she gives space for the contemplator’s own magination.
Kanto uses the medium of painting both in a diversified and experimental way, she paints alternately in wet, thick and thin, both in acrylic and oil, and with airbrush. Kanto explores the colors eternal capacity and always finds new ways to utilize them. She builds the exhibition on contrasts where the opposite completes the story.