Sirje Protsin-Petersen

Sirje Petersen

Sirje Petersen (Protsin) is a painter and art teacher. She started her artist career with figurative and abstract paintings in 1980s and has become one of the significant painters in Estonian art.

Petersen has held more than 62 personal exhibitions, including in last Tartu Art House Large Gallery (2025), Dragon Gallery (2022), Haus Gallery (2021), Toompea Castle Art Hall- Parliament of the Republic of Estonia (2020), Pärnu City Gallery in Artists House (2019), University of Tartu The Institute of Social Studies (2018), Gallery Noorus, Tartu (2017), The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) Bruxelles, Belgium (2011), Estonian Embassy in Belgium and Luxembourg, Brussels (2010), Dragon Gallery, Tallinn (2003 and 2009), Tartu Art House (2009), Gallery Becker Jyväskyla, Finland (1995), Tartu Art Hall (1994), in Stockholm, in Riga etc.

Her works belong to the art collections of the Tartu Art Museum, Museum of Tartu University, Estonian Art Fund, Supreme Court of Estonia, Tartu, The Museum of New Art in Pärnu, Lüneburg City Art Collection, Germany, IBL State Art gallery, Port-Louis, Mauritius and etc.
Private collections in Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Lichtenstein, Germany, Italy, Emirate of Abu Dhabi, Philippines and many other collections around the world.

Petersen is a member of Estonian Artists’ Association, Estonian Painters’ Association and Tartu Artists’ Union. Since 2000 she is Associate Professor of Painting at Pallas University of Applied Sciences.

Awards
Kristjan Raud Prize nomination 2021
Konrad Mägi Annual Painting Prize nomination 2021, 2022
Estonian Artists Association Annual Exhibition Public Choice Award 2019

Artists statement

Society has entered a phase of collective hypnotized insanity – war, resistance, anguish, surrender, indifference…
How do we decide to shape the lives of ourselves and future generations, whether greedy and manipulative for ego purposes, or towards a society based on higher ethics, mutual respect and love.

I deal with topics that speak to the deepest layers of human nature. These paintings are metaphors for time, history and personal emotional experience.

Whatever it says to the viewer, it’s the right message because there isn’t such a thing as a wrong and a right message.

My process of work has always been grounded in pleasure and aesthetics and I am not a bit ashamed of it. This belief guides me towards creating compositions that invite and allow the viewer to investigate its surface, its purpose, and its inner feelings.

The past, the present and the future have been intertwined.

This is a spiritual, autobiographical memory where I perceive my subjective time.

The human body and color often help me visualize the thought, perception, questions – not knowing, if these will be answered.

To be outside time, to escape time’s requirements – where from? where to? where? – I feel the curiosity and urge to exit myself, to express and share…

I am my own tempting research object. How not to drop myself or let myself be dissolved?

To accept myself the way I discover myself at a given moment.

Read full biography »

News

15/05/2025

Sirje Petersen solo exhibition “Storms and Urges” in the large gallery of the Tartu Art House. 16.05.- 15.06.2025

The exhibition offers insights into the artist’s painting practice from 1983 to the present. Sirje Petersen’s journey of becoming and being an artist began exactly 50 years ago, in 1975, when she enrolled at the Tartu Art School.

The earlier part of the exhibition focuses on the 1980s and 1990s, conceptually divided into two periods: before and after the studio fire in 1992. After losing everything, she had to start from scratch: this gave rise to the series “The Invention of the Bicycle”, which explores surrealism and conceptualism. It is important to understand that the human being has always been at the heart of Sirje Petersen’s paintings, even when a recognisable human figure is not visible. The second part of the exhibition, covering the years 2002–2025, can be described as reflections of the human soul, with all its tensions, longings and quests. In addition to earlier works, the exhibition also features Petersen’s most recent paintings, including the large-scale piece “Storms and Urges” (2024/2025, 3 × 12 m).

“As we look at both the earliest and most recent stages of Sirje Petersen’s work, three recurring themes emerge: abstraction and colour as the core essence, a gaze that examines the human essence, and a firm conviction that life without art is impossible,” notes the curator, Kadri Asmer.

Besides the exhibition, a comprehensive publication, Sirje Petersen. “Storms and Urges” will be released. In this volume, experts from various fields interpret creativity and Petersen’s work through their own disciplines, including psychology, nature, music, theatre and art history.

Curator: Kadri Asmer
Graphic design: Maarja Roosi

Sirje Petersen Flow of Light
Draakon Gallery July 25, 2022 until August 19, 2022.

Photo reportage from Sirje Petersen’s personal exhibition ‘Flow of Light’ at Draakon gallery

Light shows us colours.
What’s out comes in and what’s in gets out.
Openness and closeness.
Light helps us to see details
and light makes darkness go away.

Everyone has a place and a space in this world,
sometimes it is warm and cosy, sometimes cold and bleak.
Sometimes it is noisy, sometimes it is too silent.
Always changing – in light and in shadow.

No-one can grow in darkness.
It becomes possible in light.
Darkness may seem endless but a ray of light can always lit it up
and make everything alive.

There is no absolute reference system. Everything is relative, even the flow of time.”

Sirje Petersen

Exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.
Exhibitions in Draakon gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Ministry of Culture and Liviko Ltd.

Red Thread. Sirje Petersen
Haus Gallery 12.05.2021

Renowned artist Sirje Petersen primarily deals with human and humanity in her work. We can meet the reflections of a person’s inner world in her paintings, where figure and color play an important role as a means of expression. By purifying the painting of extra details and adding perceptible nuances from personal experience, she achieves a multidimensionality in her work, almost to the extent of abstraction.

This exhibition is presented with the support of:
Estonian National Culture Foundation
Estonian Cultural Endowment for Fine and Applied Arts
Tartu Cultural Endowment
Pallas University of Applied Sciences