Artist Name: Marja Lianko

Inspiration: I was thinking of a summer day at my grandparents’ house in Tampere. The memories are tinged in gold and yellow and they bring back the little girl in a red dress running around barefoot and carefree. I also used images from music sheets that had belonged to my father, who had tried to teach himself to play the violin.

BIO:  Marja Lianko was born in Helsinki, Finland and grew up in a home filled with art as her father was an active collector. She received her BFA from Tufts University and her art training at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where she taught printmaking and mixed media for over twenty years. Marja’s work was exhibited was at the Museum of Fine Arts in 1976 and her work has been exhibited in a number of local galleries and museums, including the Fogg Museum at Harvard University, the De Cordova Museum in Lincoln, MA, the Rose Museum, Waltham, MA and the Fuller Museum, MA, among others. She has also been honored as the recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Regional Fellowship in 1994 and Ballinglen Arts Foundation Fellowship in 2004.