Full blast of colors

The visual artist and children's book author Bolatta Silis-Høegh, born in 1981, has been given a set assignment by our national postal service Tusass, which she is completing with a color-saturated landscape painting with ice, mountains and sunset.

The history behind the current painting goes back 70 years.

In 1956, European postal services initiated a collaboration that has also developed into a common stamp tradition. Each year, the member states issue two stamps; one with a common motif and the other with their own interpretation of the year's theme.

This year, the stamp with the common motif was created by the German-Finnish artist Klaus Welp, who has put full blast of colors. Seven white pearls on a string tell about 70 years of uninterrupted collaboration. The task for Bolatta Silis-Høegh was a color counterpoint, where a European starting point meets a Greenlandic interpretation.

“We don’t get more beautiful colors than at sunset, so it was obvious to paint the moment when the light over the sky and sea is strong,” Bolatta Silis-Høegh tells Sermitsiaq.

Her two most recent stamps took their motifs from the fountain and the board in her childhood town of Qaqortoq. The new stamp puts a strong emphasis on Greenland in a European collaboration.

“I have taken inspiration from photographs that I have taken over time, and that my old nanny in Qaqortoq Karen Marie Kielsen-Høegh has sent me from her travels. The motif on the stamp is not from a specific place, but from Greenland.

With the new stamp, which will be released on May 8, Bolatta Silis-Høegh has made a total of 12 stamps for Tusass.

Exhibition in Riga

Bolatta Silis-Høegh has exhibited widely in Greenland, Denmark and internationally.

She has just been to Riga to open the exhibition »KAAVIIAARNEQ° CYCLE«, which also marks the 35th anniversary of the Nordic Council of Ministers' office in the Latvian capital. The exhibition has an extra dimension because her father, the photographer and author Ivars Silis comes from Latvia.

“It is a great experience for me to exhibit in Latvia, and every time I meet family members that I have not met before,” says Bolatta Silis-Høegh.

In Greenland, her works can be found in collections such as Nuuk Art Museum and Greenland National Museum & Archives.