Merike Estna

The work of Merike Estna is largely invested in the processes of painting, as a way of approaching the artwork as an integral part of life rather than about life. In her process-based work, Estna is embedding patterns and color combinations from the crafts and applied arts, vocabularies which have not traditionally been accepted in the visual language of painting. Thus, her work is challenging the masculine territory of painting and questioning the strict visual separation between painting and craft discourses. Initially subjecting canvases to such patterns and application-based treatments, Estna gradually progressed to cover clothes, objects, and entire spaces with cottonwool colors, gradually expanding her research into color and the acts of painting, the possibilities of experiencing and looking at things.