Katja Tschährä (b. 1975) is a Finnish visionary artist living in Tampere in her birth home next to Sacred Lake (Pyhäjärvi). Tschährä's visionary art is based on the body's automatic movement and she found her skills by chance in the year of Covid, 2020. She works under an artist name because her visionary art is very much different compared to her "normal" art and comes from another source. She describes that the drawing feels like some magnet is leading the pen on the paper.
Tschährä's drawings are magical combinations of pictures of the cells and the Universe; microcosm and macrocosm are intertwined together. Fractals are usual forms in her art. She thinks her art is based on shamanism where everything is connected in the great cycle of life. With drawing, she feels closer to God and the mysteries of life.
Tschährä started to do automatic healing treatments at the same time when she found her visionary art and these two skills are woven together. Many of her artworks include musical elements and she feels like playing an instrument when she gives healing treatments.
The artist name Tschährä is her family's original Karelian name. The family of Tschährä lived in Karelia, Impilahti, at least from the 17th century to 1944 when Russia took over Karelia from Finland in the Continuation War. By her artist name she salutes her Karelian roots and shamanistic traditions that lasted long in Eastern Finland.
Tschährä's artworks have been purchased by the collection of The College of Psychic Studies (Great Britain), Collection of Mediumistic art, COMA (Germany) and by private collectors in Finland, Great Britain, US, Italy, France and Belgium. She has had two private exhibitions and her art has been on show in three group exhibitions. This spring she got the artist grant for two months from The Arts Promotion Centre Finland. In autumn 2022 her artwork will be on show in the exhibition Creative Spirits at the College of Psychic Studies, and she will take part in a group exhibition in Finland during December 2022-January 2023.
Photo: Siiri Kauhanen