Keili Major is an Estonian painter living in Garessio, in the Val Tanaro in north-west Italy. She has painted in oil since 2015, when she was living in Australia and training under Bill Mackay in Queensland, where she won her...
Read MoreKeili Major is an Estonian painter living in Garessio, in the Val Tanaro in north-west Italy. She has painted in oil since 2015, when she was living in Australia and training under Bill Mackay in Queensland, where she won her first prize in 2016.
In 2018, working on a large koi and losing patience with the brushes, she pressed a gloved finger to the canvas and felt it click into place. Finger painting has been her signature ever since: for her own work she uses no brushes, only oil pressed straight onto the cotton with her hands, so nothing stands between her and the place she is painting, and the surface keeps the pressure of each fingertip. She still teaches and paints in the classic way, but the finger work is the one that is truly hers.
She grew up among the forests, lakes and rivers of southern Estonia, and after seven years in Australia she came back to find the same three things in this valley: mountains, forest, a river. Most of her own work circles them. In Anno Tanaro she returns to one point of the Tanaro, the river close to her studio, once a month for a year, painting how a single place changes through the seasons.
