The painting

Almost everything in At the break of dawn is grey. White mountain ridges rise under a dark, drifting sky, and a black city skyline runs along the bottom edge. Small dark figures are scattered across the ridges, several of them hanging from thin curved lines.

The light comes from behind the city: a rust-coloured glow spreads across the lower slopes, with a thin shaft of white falling into it. In the right foreground a tall, dark figure stands still, and smaller figures appear further off in the haze.

It brings together what Wartiainen often returns to: figurative shapes in an abstract space, and the city set against northern nature.

The artist

Yvonne Wartiainen was born in 1976 in Kirkenes, in the far north-east of Norway, and has lived in Oslo since 1997. She paints and makes prints, including lithographs, drypoints and digital prints.

Much of her work draws on the landscape she grew up in: the midnight sun, the long winter dark and the northern lights. She has held solo exhibitions in Oslo, Kirkenes and elsewhere in Norway since 2004, and her work has been bought by Statoil, Amnesty International and Hafslund, among others.