Every month for a year, Keili Major returns to the same spot on the Tanaro river and paints it – using only her fingers.

On the bank of the Tanaro, in a small valley in the Ligurian Alps, stands a stone cairn. It was placed there in May 2026 by the Estonian painter Keili Major.

Major will return to that exact spot 12 times – once a month from June 2026 to May 2027. On each visit, she will photograph the river in the same light before spending a month translating what she saw into a 60 x 80cm oil painting on cotton canvas. She uses no brushes: every mark is made with her fingers.

The project is called Anno Tanaro. The first work in the series, Tanaro I, was completed on 9 June 2026.

A year measured in paint

The premise of Anno Tanaro is both simple and exacting. Major’s position beside the river is fixed, marked by the cairn. So is the light: she takes each photograph in mid-morning, just after the line of shadow has cleared the riverbed, when the sun is between 22 and 28 degrees above the horizon.

Each month, a Nikon D5300 fitted with a fixed 16mm prime lens returns to the same point on the bank, its framing unchanged. Everything else is allowed to shift: the level of the water, the arrival and disappearance of the leaves, the snow and the changing angle of the light as the year turns.

“The variable in the series is the year,” Major says. “The same rocks. The same line of trees. The same horizon of mountains. But the water shifts, the leaves arrive and depart, the snow comes high, then low, then high again, and the angles of light roll through the year.

“The 12 paintings will record those changes – not as a picture book of the seasons, but as a single subject seen from 12 angles of duration.”

The Tanaro river in June, photographed as a reference for Tanaro I.

The art of returning

The project has a recognisable art-historical lineage. Claude Monet repeatedly painted the façade of Rouen Cathedral between 1892 and 1894. Katsushika Hokusai returned to Mount Fuji across different landscapes and seasons in his Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji series, created between 1830 and 1832. On Kawara painted one date at a time for almost half a century, while Hiroshi Sugimoto photographed the horizon across more than 200 bodies of water, following a single set of compositional rules.

Anno Tanaro is Major’s contemporary contribution to that conversation, distilled into one year, one river and a small medieval town in Piedmont.

Finger painting has been Major’s principal practice since 2018, when she adopted the technique after a moment she still describes vividly: “When I press my finger on the canvas, I still feel that little jolt, like two puzzle pieces finally clicking into place.”

Every painting in Anno Tanaro is made without brushes, Major’s fingertips coming into direct contact with the canvas. She uses Holbein Duo Aqua water-mixable oils, without turpentine or other solvents. The result is a dense, immediate impasto that would be difficult to reproduce with a brush.

Tanaro I (June 2026), a 60 x 80cm finger painting in oil on cotton canvas, by Keili Major.

Three forests

Keili Major was born in Estonia and grew up among its forests and lakes. From 2015 to 2021, she studied oil painting in Queensland, Australia, under the painter Bill Mackay. She moved to Italy at the end of 2021 and has lived since 2023 in Garessio, a medieval town in the province of Cuneo. A member of I Borghi più belli d’Italia – an association of Italy’s most beautiful villages – Garessio was named the most beautiful village in Piedmont in 2018.

Major describes her journey through what she calls the Three Forests: her childhood in Estonia; her artistic formation in the Queensland bush; and her return to a landscape of forests and rivers in the Italian Alps. For her, the point on the Tanaro that she will paint 12 times is the third forest translated on to canvas – the same constellation of mountain, water and trees that she knew as a child in Estonia.

Keili Major in her Garessio studio with two finger-painted landscapes of the Tanaro river. Private collection.

Anno Tanaro grew out of an earlier work, a 95 x 95cm finger painting in oil, also titled Tanaro. Completed in 2026, it is now on permanent public display at La Fabbrica del Cotone, a restaurant in Garessio housed in a former cotton mill dating from 1882.

The painting is not for sale. It is the work from which the new cycle emerged: Anno Tanaro is, as Major puts it, “the conversation that painting started with itself”.

Ten paintings still to come

Tanaro I and Tanaro II are now complete. Ten paintings remain, with one to be produced each month until May 2027. Each work will be unveiled on Major’s website in the month of its completion.

Meanwhile, Major’s first solo exhibition in Italy, Piccolo Sole, opens in Garessio on 20 August 2026. A retrospective bringing together all 12 paintings in the Anno Tanaro cycle is planned for spring or summer 2027.

The 12 reference photographs – taken from the same position and in the same light, one month apart – will form a parallel body of work that can be exhibited alongside the paintings. Major intends to offer the cycle first as a complete collection to institutions and major collectors. Individual paintings will become available after May 2027.

Tanaro II (July 2026), a 60 x 80cm finger painting in oil on cotton canvas, by Keili Major.