Provided photo One of the pieces in the exhibition "Northern Tier" by Eric Aho, currently on display at the Finlandia Gallery in the Finnish American Heritage Center in Hancock

HANCOCK – Finlandia Foundation National’s Finlandia Art Gallery, in collaboration with the Copper Country Finns and Friends, present an evening with visiting Finnish-American artist Eric Aho on Thursday, October 9. The event gets under way with a lecture by Aho at 6 p.m., followed by a reception for the artist beginning at 7 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public, and refreshments will be served.

Aho, who hails from Vermont, is showing work in an exhibit titled “Northern Tier.”; this exhibit will be on display through November 13. His talk, named “Places and Their Worlds,” explores the development of his work and the influence of his Finnish-American upbringing on his art and his world view. The titled is derived from a statement by Finnish poet Pentti Saarikoski, who once said “I’m not writing of the world and its places; I write about places and their worlds.”

Aho is the first participant in Finlandia Foundation’s Artist in Residency Program; he arrived in the Copper Country in early October to find inspiration in our lush forests and pristine shoreline. During his residency, Aho will complete several finished artworks which will be on display alongside 25 works sent from his Vermont studio.

FFN recognized Eric Aho as Artist of the Year from 2022-2024, honoring his outstanding contributions to contemporary art and celebrating his deep connections to his Finnish American culture and traditions. This exhibition and residency serve as a culmination to his contributions as Artist of the Year.



Aho is a third-generation Finnish American living in Vermont. His grandfather emigrated to the United States in 1903, followed by his grandmother and uncle in 1906. His aunt and father were born in the Finnish community of Sugar Creek, Ohio, in 1917 and 1920, respectively. Shortly after his father’s birth, the family relocated to the vibrant Finnish community in Fitchburg and Townsend, Massachusetts.

Aho maintains strong personal and professional ties to his ancestral Finland and credits his Finnish American upbringing as a continuing source of inspiration and influence in his work.

His paintings represent the Finnish way of life, strongly connected to nature, sauna and community. In his Finlandia Art Gallery exhibit Northern Tier, Aho will exhibit paintings that are shaped by both memory and direct observation of northern boreal forests, forests that stretch across high northern latitudes. Providing a particularly rich and complex subject for Aho, northern boreal forests represent both a biome and a wellspring for his imagination. For many years, Aho has painted across vast geographic locations, from the northern United States to the Laurentian Mountains of Canada, and across to Scandinavia and the Finnish taiga.

“These trees–along with their verdant understories and varied terrains, often punctuated by streams, rapids, and glacial erratics–register in my eye and imagination as the forests central to our archetypal associations,” said Aho. “My forest paintings, like much of my work, invite multiple meanings and interpretations. I’m inclined to suggest unseen human presence in the forest through the materiality of paint itself. Oil color oozes and tenses, puckers and shines, drawing our attention to the human-like qualities of the forest beyond the limbs, trunks, veins, and crowns we share in common.”

“Forests are wild and mysterious places, but they are also familiar refuges,” continues Aho. “At times, they’re grand and architectural–cathedral-like, with arcades, columns, vaults, and aisles. Other woods are smaller and feel intimate. Their spaces, organized like rooms, hallways, foyers, and thresholds, evoke the places we live in and inhabit. In these ways, the Northern Tier paintings are as much about worlds within the forested places as they are about the world of paint and its magical ability to transform space and time.”