There is a view that a person’s life is shaped fifty percent by heredity and karma, and the remaining fifty percent by own free will.

Marta Tatter was born on the island of Hiiumaa on 23 November 1913, in a village and a large family. The island’s stunning nature remained a constant, even as people’s lives were buffeted by political upheavals and world wars.

In 1940, her nephew Ülo Sooster drew her portrait, soon after entering the Pallas art school.

After his arrest in 1949, Marta made a principled choice: she fled to Sweden by boat, risking her life. That was her decision.

Yet she kept her bond with her nephew at all costs, sending him what was nearly impossible to buy in the USSR: felt-tip pens, rapidographs with sets of colored ink, and other art materials.

When first parcel arrived, Ülo waltzed around the table and shouted, “I have never seen anything so beautiful! People, people, look how many drawings I’m going to make!” And he drew, and drew, and drew…

Marta outlived her nephew by more than thirty years. And throughout those years, she was accompanied by the junipers of Hiiumaa—drawn by Ülo Sooster.