Visual arts major Ilai Jaervinen’s love for the arts can be traced back to her family of origin, beginning with her grandfather.
Her maternal grandfather was an oil painter, and her mother was an art teacher at the school that Jaervinen attended in the city of Jyväskylä, Finland. However, Jaervinen is the first person in her family to pursue formal art training in college and will graduate with the Class of 2026.
While her family members typically paint landscapes and still lifes, Jaervinen’s work focuses more on portraits. Her attitude toward what others deem difficult inspires her to step up to the task of painting faces and people. “Everyone’s always talking about how difficult it is to paint faces… and, well, I’m going to take on the challenge,” she said.
Jaervinen remembers struggling as a child to draw the human form. She would beg her mother to draw outlines of people so she could color them. Now, drawing people is Jaervinen’s favorite subject.
Jaervinen’s series titled Everything Light Touches is an example of her focus on faces. In this work, she is also experimenting with light and emotion. Jaervinen explained that each of her paintings can take up to 40 hours to complete. Oil painting in particular requires a degree of patience, she added, since the paint can sometimes take months to completely dry.
She described the process. “It’s kind of like a puzzle that you work on it for so long, and if something doesn’t work you just keep working on it … until you get all the pieces to work together.”
Jaervinen and her family have lived in the Seattle area since she was 11 years old, and she transferred to Seattle Pacific in Autumn Quarter in 2024. Despite not being at SPU for very long, she has already found various ways to use her skills around campus. As a photographer and illustrator for The Falcon, SPU’s independent, student-run news publication, Jaervinen visually adds to the stories written by her fellow students with her work.
A few of Jaervinen’s favorite classes so far are “Art Foundations 3: Time” and “Monuments of World Art II.” One statue from the Renaissance period, The Deposition by Michelangelo which features the body of Christ being held by some of his followers after the crucifixion, inspired her to think about how artists can convey deep spiritual emotion into their art — something she hopes to achieve as well.
After she graduates, Jaervinen would love to own her own art business or studio. By taking advantage of SPU’s entrepreneurship minor, she plans to learn as much as she can about the basics of building a business as she prepares to continue her family’s art legacy.
