Henry Wuorila-Stenberg

I was weak. I could not withstand my tormentors' insinuations without faltering. My poisoned mind led me astray countless times. If I could return to the beginning, this is what I would tell myself:
Think. What is the highest need of your spirit? What do you fall back on at the moment of your despair? What consoles you when your grief is deepest? • • •

“The difference between oils and works on paper is enormous in my case. Before, I used to fight my way forward with macho bluster, the taste of blood in my mouth, throughout the night, unable to stop. Now, I have learned to work in a considerably calmer, and more contemplative, way. • • •

“Throughout my life I have reflected on my motives in different ways. They have changed a lot. In the 1990s it became clear for me that the less I understand about painting, the better. Now I know that faith and confidence in one’s work do not require understanding of what you are doing, faith is more important for painting than understanding. • • •

“Some time back in the early ’90s I said to Pentti Koskinen that the worst mistake a painter could make is to paint a large cross and put it on show,” Henry recalls when showing me the works for his new exhibition. “And with me it’s always so that if I notice and say something like that, I'll start thinking straight away how to do it. • • •

Sisyphus at work: rolling an immense stone up a mountain slope only to come almost to the top and see the stone roll down again, and to begin the work anew – for ever. This is the myth with which Henry Wuorila-Stenberg describes his own work as an artist. He has never been satisfied with fossilizing as a living classic or with commodifying his art as a cut-and-dried brand. Rather, like Sisyphus he has returned again and again to the foot of his mountain. • • •

When we have faith in our own powers, we are guided by them. But an artist’s journey into his innermost self leads him face to face with all kinds of forces that dwell in the dark night of our soul, matter destructive powers, aggression, darkness itself live in our very souls. In his struggle to reach the immaterial level of light and the vibrant honey and repel the forces of hatred. • • •

On goal in life, where we find our security and our life’s meaning, our spiritual tradition and what we pursue within it, all this has an effect on how we are integrated.
Life is a process of trying to find security and meaning. Mostly we take refuge in things that cause suffering, though we all look for happiness.
Painting has always – starting from childhood – has a part in all the things I have taken refuge in. My desires, my worldview, my goals – also the ones I have hidden from myself – have all been part of this taking refuge in painting and have driven it forward. • • •

The Yellow Yard and the Blue Heaven
Henry Wuorila-Stenberg was born in Helsinki on 6th February 1949. His father, Harry Stenberg was a veterinary surgeon, and his mother Hillevi Stenberg was a hospital nurse. The men who lived in the flats at the Stenberg’s address – Mannerheimintie 71 – were, like Harry Stenberg, war invalids. The traumas of war drove many of them to end their days by their own hand. The young Henry was fond of the “sacred trees and rocks” of the nearby Central Park (Keskuspuisto). In winter the children would build three-storied snow castles and play in the attic or the cellar. Their home was full of music; no art books were to be found on the bookshelves. “I had a big sister who always defended me, and a little brother whom all the girls loved.” • • •

Henry Wuorila-Stenberg has many times wanted to discard everything he has learnt and “started from the beginning”, cast his skin. In the early 1970s social realism dominated Finnish painting and upon return from studying in Italy and West Germany, Wuorila-Stenberg also worked in this style.
In the mid-70s he continued to study painting in East Germany and returned to Finland renewed, switching from oils to acrylics and shifting his vision from an outward reality to his inner world. • • •

The clear sky is like a void, an infinite aperture above us. From his childhood, Henry Wuorila-Stenberg remembers a yellow ground and a blue sky. Confined to a hospital bed for a long time, all he could see from the window was the sky. In fact, the window was like a large blue painting. Later on, the sky became a background for men and women dressed in black, with black hair, and red or a little yellow flashing here and there. There is only a single person or several, an entire group of them, against the sky. When people are detached from reality and cast into empty space, misfortune, misery and violence are accentuated and receive a more general meaning. • • •