In April 2026, Comfort Hotel will display paintings by Maaria Märkälä, inspired by Adele’s most beautiful song, Sky Fall.
Maaria Märkälä is a painter specializing in urban landscapes. She graduated in 2002 and became known for her landscape paintings painted during the harsh Finnish winters at Christmas time. The Finnish Cultural Foundation’s grants after graduation enabled her to work in Berlin.
After returning to Finland, Märkälä was elected vice-chairman of the Helsinki Artists’ Association and later the chairman of the Finnish Painters’ Union for nine years (2008-2016). Maaria Märkälä’s urban views can be very abstract details of the landscape, flowers in a park, or other ecstasies of different color and light situations. Märkälä is known for the thick impastos of her paintings and the wasteful use of paint. She is inspired from the living life around her, when cycling along the seashores, through parks and forests to her studio at the Cable Factory, or when adventuring around the world. For Märkälä, painting is like being on journey.
To quote Pessi Rautio, The Editor-in-Chief of Taidelehti: “Märkälä wants to paint, to bring out the good on the top, so the process must end in something hopeful, full of oxygen and life, light, even what is beautiful.” “To Märkälä, the world includes objects, good ones that simply must be depicted through painting, not least because they make such good paintings.”
Märkälä’s paintings are in several collections, including HAM, HUS, Finnish National Gallery, Tiftö Foundation, Stiftung des Kulturfonds, Hyvinkää and Tuusula Art Museums and Kymenlaakso Museum.