Risto Turunen has worked for over 25 years as a professional artist. Beginning after graduating from a high school commercial art program, he entered the workforce as a layout and illustration artist at the Toronto Sun. After a short stint there, he spent most of the eighties creating larger-scale oil and mixed media paintings. Represented by Nancy Poole’s Studio, his works sold to collectors across the continent.

In 1989, his main focus shifted to freelance illustration, working for the advertising, institutional, editorial and publishing fields as well as taking on the occasional mural commission. Together, his fine art and illustration work have picked up several awards including the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant. Risto works with many of the traditional mediums; oils, watercolour, acrylic, pen and ink, scratchboard, graphite, pencil crayons, pastels, and marker for storyboard work.

Client list includes: London Life Insurance, The Grand Theatre, Quadrus Investment Services, 3M, Pfizer, BASF, Chrysler Canada, Great West Life, Procter and Gamble, Canada Trust, Echo Power Tools, The Financial Post Magazine, The London Free Press, London Magazine, Score Magazine, The University of Western Ontario Gazette, Western Business School, McClelland and Stewart, Harcourt Canada, McCormick’s Foods, Highliner Foods, Beaver Foods, Kelsey’s Restaurants, Country Style Donuts, Shopper’s Drug Mart, Mandarin Restaurant, Masonville Place, St. Joseph’s Health Care, Victoria Hospital, Dream of a Lifetime Lottery, London Health Sciences Centre, and the Ontario Ministry of Education.

Risto lives with his wife and four daughters in Peterborough, Ontario.