Mikko Ijäs (born 1978 in Jyväskylä, lives and works in Helsinki) is a Finnish visual artist and researcher. Mikko Ijäs is a doctor of Arts student in the Aalto University in Helsinki. Ijäs graduated as a Masters of Arts in 2006 from the department of photography of the University of Arts and Design, Helsinki. Ijäs’s doctoral dissertation work in progress titled The Eye, Hand and Mind deals with the evolution of art in the context of art history, neuropsychology and the practice of fine arts. Ijäs’s works are represented in various collections and he has been exhibiting widely both in Finland and abroad.

Grandeur of Life – digital drawings
My recent body of work Grandeur of Life (2009 – ) consists of digital drawings drawn using the Apple iPhone and iPad. These modern, simple to use touch-screen mobile communication devices have enable me to share my digital drawings globally immediately after they are finished. The basis for my work is personal perception and emotion. The subjects for my work have been my family, friends, home, flowers, landscapes and self-portraits. The work share the same excited attitude towards life, environment and its visuality, even though the individual drawings are made without any conceptual framework.
The title of the show Grandeur of life is quoted from Charles Darwin's magnificent epilogue of The Origins of Species (1859):
“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
The drawings are all done during 2009 and 2010. The body of work is a result of new method I started two years ago. It all started with a question which started to bother me: why some particular pieces of art, like Matisse’s or van Gogh’s portraits, interiors and still lifes moved and excited me? Even though I had been studying and teaching the theory of art, I still couldn’t verbalize those emotions aroused by some of those pictures. I found a new approach to my artistic work and to my research. This new approach has led me to travel to France, Germany, United States, India and Africa to study the evolution of humans and the evolution of art. I’ve always kept the same questions in mind: Why people have been making pictures? Why this practice has endured through time? Why some of these pictures still have the power to excite spectators after thousands of years?” … Read More