TIMO MÄHÖNEN, born in 1960 and living in Karhula, is a prominent and wellknown contemporary artist in Southeastern Finland. His big colour-works have been received well both in Skandinavia and Central Europe. In the early 1990s Mähönen got interested in the visual language of ancient rock-paintings as well as of what the newest pop-culture expresses.

Mähönen painted intensively using mixed techniques with strong man and woman-motifs which tell of the Finnish Carelian patriarchal tradition which is amazingly resemblant of primitive African tribal art. His idiosyncratic concept of using colours was deeply influenced and changed by this. Seducing lime-green, diabolic-red, different nuances of ochre and yellow took over in his paintings, expressing emotional warmth with an almost stupefying power.

Mähönen characterizes his working-method as an intricate and demanding process of changing and making choices where nothing can or may be done without due deliberation. His often big paintings tell of colour-washes and almost three-dimensional paint-brush strokes combined with deliberate, thickly layed out colours and nuances.

Mähönen likes to describe his works as colour-universes. Lately he has painted new types of many-layered paintings where often decorative, endlessly meandering figures and asymmetry come to the fore.

Timo Mähönen is known for his altruistic work for art and artists in general and artists´ rights.