Tarja Pitkänen-Walter

Introduction

Member of the CERADA steering group

Tarja Pitkänen-Walter is a practicing artist and professor of painting at the University of the Arts Helsinki. She completed her Doctorate in Fine Arts in 2006, exploring haptic visuality and multisensoriness in painting. Her art practice, which spans thirty years, investigates the painting process through material thinking, resulting in expanded paintings. Her work is exhibited internationally and in Finland. She has a wide variety of experiences teaching art in diverse levels of art education institutes since the 1980s, and has incorporated her artistic research into her teaching to varying degrees, depending on the appropriateness for the course. Pitkänen-Walter has held several trustee and art expertise positions, for example the vice-chair of the National Council for Visual Arts in Finland (2004–2009), and is a member of the board of directors for Frame Finland (2012–2014).