Celebrating the relentlessly creative

Julia Valtanen is based in Tallinn, Estonia. She graduated with a Master's degree in Graphic Design in 2011, after which she completed a painting course at the Estonian Academy of Art. Today, Julia works in her studio as an artist at Ars-i Maja, an art factory located in Tallinn. The main areas of her work are painting and paper collages. She rethinks natural forms and explores new materiality by creating new spaces in her art, and is truly interested in exploring how everything is connected and how things influence each other.

Craftsmanship means commitment and investing all your time in an activity that you cannot stop doing because it is your way of manifesting yourself in the world. Being able to create, for me, is a uniqueness and one of the most striking aspects and necessities of being human.

As an artist, I am interested in all kinds of approaches to creating one's own artistic world through different mediums. I am interested in materials and how different authors achieve very different results using them. For me, this is always a great source of inspiration.

There are many craftspeople among my friends, and I am always happy when we do a project together. One of my favourite projects with The Upstairs Collective is a series of clocks made with my illustrations.

For me, perfection is not an end in itself, but a process of constant development. It is that feeling of knowing you are on the right path.