Toomas Vint’s painter’s career has lasted for over 40 years – but you cannot say that his first works were dramatically different from this exhibition here. Again and again Vint seems to bounce back into the net of transcendentalism, landscapes (and metaphysical landscapes), loneliness, paradox, terror, eroticism and conception. All this has been fuelling his excitement for creating – as much as his meticulous painting technique and attractive motifs have put the public under his spell. But what is it that Vint aims for in his work?

This exhibition seems to be probably his most private one yet. Without a doubt – all the works of a great artist should be more or less personal, it cannot be any other way, but it seems that this time Vint has painted first of all for himself. The landscapes he lays down for us don’t explain themselves as simply as before when summery greens and sunsets on the pine-trees of Nomme were an experience that any viewer could easily make their own.

This time the scenes contain more fantasy, mysticism and hidden elements. Their origin remains unknown to us, we haven’t experienced those situations. But they are not overly fairy-tale-like, out-of-this-realm landscapes. No, they seem almost straightforward and intimate, sincere and familiar. This is how those landscapes raise above the usual and start to feel almost as metaphors.

Although a landscape has always been the means of expressing „something else“ for Toomas Vint, he has never abandoned the landscape itself. Those green, purple, yellow and blue landscapes have never been mere metaphors or conceptions, they are what they depict. And interestingly enough, it is not always just „nature“ that Vint portrays in them.

On one hand, for Vint the landscape is a possibility to articulate his fantasies, strains, dreams, ideas, visions and so on. On the other hand – landscapes enable him to explore such inaccessible phenomena as a mood bestowed by the evening light, an eerie atmosphare of a foggy meadow, circumstance created by a row of trees,  the architectonics of the sky – and so on. In spite of the fact that Vint seems so cool and composed, there is also a good dose of romantic in him. To be more exact – it is not a romantic speaking through Vint’s landscapes – it is a passionate human being. His passion goes towards landscape, metaphysics and the art of painting.