Honest Talk About Being Artist
When people talk about an artist, they think of someone who paints ecstatically for days on end.
“Get a real job,” say some. “Get a job that is work and not just art.”
Work + Art = Artist
But really, art is work and besides that, it is also art. The difficulty of this work is that it has to be developed like any work, i.e. as routines and processes, but it still has to be art as well.
It has to be art that expresses living and experiencing in such a way that breaks boundaries and habits.
It has to be art that appreciates play as much as work.
And it has to be art that takes all of you but receives criticism without being crushed.
Being a Working Artist
I have painted a big series all spring. At the same time, I have written emails, social media messages, blog posts, and exhibition descriptions. I have edited the videos recorded in the fall for the course Doll World. I have applied for a new grant for the new paintings and luckily got it. I have participated in an artist training program that lasted the whole spring. I have varnished, packed, and taken paintings to exhibitions. I have handled financial matters. Fortunately, my husband helps me with the transport of paintings and accounting.
These are just a part of all the tasks other than painting or getting ideas for paintings.
Now in July, I have been a bit tired. It’s been a lot of work and on top of that, there’s this art part.
Dreams, Goals, and Reality
Many of my art books were purchased when I dreamed of becoming an artist. These books describe art as a fun game and show a colorful life. I look at those books with completely different eyes than before. Being an artist is much more than that, at least if you want to move forward.
My goal has been to make art that I love and that others love so much that a few pieces outlive me. When I set the goal, I didn’t think about what would happen after that. I achieved the goal a couple of years ago. I am pretty satisfied with many paintings and I know people who also genuinely like the pieces they have purchased from me.
It’s surprising that after that, something new and desirable has regularly come up, just like in any job.
Being an artist is pretty much like any job.
Magic of Imagination
I would like to always write about being an artist authentically like this, and on the other hand, I don’t want to bring it all to the table all the time.
I feel that it’s natural and important for humans to express themselves creatively. I want to inspire everybody for it in this blog and in my courses.
And especially, I want to inspire everyone to imagine, because it’s the imagination that breaks boundaries and habits. It’s the imagination that uses the skills to make art.
In that respect, being an artist is really not just any job. And that’s why I love this job even when I am a little tired.
What do you think?
Disappearing Garden – About Transience and Creating the Best You Can
I’ve been painting for the exhibition “Taiteilijat Albert Edelfeltin tunnelmissa – Artists in the Mood of Albert Edelfelt”, which is in August-September. Now I want to present the main work of my new series to you. It’s about transience and called “Katoava puutarha – Disappearing Garden”.
There is sadness in this painting. For years we had a neighbor who liked gardening. She fell ill and died and the rich garden has now been turned into a lawn. It made me think about how perishable we are, including our work. We are disappearing gardens, no matter how much we would like to think otherwise. So let’s enjoy our flowers while they still bloom!
Impression of an Old Painting
Disappearing Garden has many small details and a lot of work went into them. But because of the subject itself, it seemed important to spend time and patience on this work. I wanted to create the impression of an old painting that reaches across the eras as if overcoming its core problem: transience.
I usually make paintings in pairs, but this time I had a pair already ready: last year’s finished painting Queen of the Night. It is a dark shade and I wanted to make a light counterpart to it.
Both of these works are inspired by bygone eras: the 18th and 19th centuries.
About Transience and Creating the Best You Can
While painting The Disappearing Garden, I thought about how important it has been for me to practice a lot. But recognizing my transience, I now want to paint as well as I can. Life is hectic and a new start is always tempting. I can make dozens and dozens of nice and small pieces and collect likes with them. On the other hand, I can wait for the perfect time and perfect vision: question my artistic core and taste and where my focus should be.
But it’s also so that life is constantly changing. If I don’t capture this moment, will I achieve anything? That’s why it felt important to give this painting as much attention as it wanted.
Do these thoughts resonate with you?
Gold Caches of Your Artistic Journey
This week, I talk about the balance between following others and doing your own thing.
– Do what everyone else does.
That’s what my mother often told me when I was a child. Her point was to encourage me to learn and be part of a crowd – important skills, but I hated that phrase. As if you shouldn’t deviate from the path, stop, or run faster!
As an adult, I learned that life is not just about moving on your own. Everyone needs public transport.
Helsinki Bus Station Theory for Artists
Have you heard about Helsinki Bus Station Theory? It is particularly familiar to us southern Finns. Most of the buses in Helsinki go a long way on the same road until they take a different direction. “Stay on the bus, don’t hop off too soon,” we advise. This also applies to many things in life.
As artists, we don’t want to be like everyone else, but to hop off and find our own thing. And yet, to get to our own remote area with our treasures, we have to sit on the bus for quite a while. If we leave too early, we won’t find the caches, because they are much further away than we initially thought.
Traveling with Companions
We all have artistic talents that are strengthened by the journey together. This is why I teach classes.
If we get off too early, our talents won’t emerge. Ingenuity turns into chaos in the eyes of the viewer. Intuitiveness makes us do ordinary things because we can’t express its nuances. Sensitivity appears as unnecessary cautiousness. Analyticity produces a rigid impression and our personality is covered in an internal struggle about what the image should look like.
Through art history, I have understood that traveling with a companion can be enormously inspiring. As artists, we are always part of the past generations. When we look at old paintings, we can have a dialogue not only with ourselves and with our current teachers, but through our imagination, also with the masters themselves.
Gold Caches
Before I started this painting, I was looking at a portrait of Louis Pasteur by Albert Edefelt. Did Edelfelt guess how important a person Pasteur would become? I told Albert that we still benefit from Louis’s inventions. So, his glass bottles and notebooks were like gold caches.
My gold caches are found in nature. When I walk on the wide path of a nearby park, I often turn my gaze to the shadows. When the sun hits there, a humble plant suddenly finds itself at the center of the scene.
When that happens, I don’t only stare at the star of the show, but look around and notice all kinds of other wonderful things.
As a child, I already knew that it is not always good to march on and act like everyone else. It just has taken all my life to express that by painting.
Did you know about Helsinki Bust Station Theory before? Where your gold caches could be? What do you think about all this?
Watercolor Fairies – Painting the Magic of Nature
I’ve been going through my art supplies lately and reflecting on my path as an artist so far. In recent blog posts, I’ve featured drawings, but now we’re moving on to watercolors. This post is about painting watercolor fairies and the wilderness around them.
Watercolor Surfaces – Aquabord vs. Paper
I love thick watercolor paper, but I made a special find in my stash: a hard base meant for watercolors. I bought it years ago but had forgotten it. But now I had to try this Ampersand Aquabord!
Watercolors have a built-in sense of surprise that keeps me interested in the work. Still, you can also do accurate and illustrative details. I like to use a lot of water at the beginning and less at the end. Even if Aquabord is surprisingly absorbent, I prefer the effects that a good-quality paper creates. But maybe this is the thing that would need more practice. It is said that to get to know a certain paper, tens of experiments are needed.
When the painting progresses I move on to negative painting, so paint the background in such a way that I leave the shapes from the previous layers exposed to maintain the brightness.
Aquabord turned out to be more convenient than paper in keeping the painting light. It is easy to wipe off color with either a rag or a dry brush. But even if lifting color is harder on paper, I still would prefer watercolor paper, especially 100% cotton, because it feels so wonderful! However, for beginner watercolorists, Aquabord is great because you can erase and start over!
Watercolor Fairies
About four years ago, my watercolor set was a close friend, and I thought I was at my best in watercolor painting. One of my favorite subjects in watercolor was fairy-tale characters – spirits of nature that rise from the surrounding greenery and have the sensitivity of a butterfly. It was also fun to come up with names for them!
When painting a watercolor, a character can appear by accident. It’s fascinating to see who comes up as the round shapes of the plants encourage the spirit to emerge.
Even though nowadays I mostly paint with oil, I still want to step into wild nature with a brush and listen to my intuition. Watercolors have taught me a way to first splash freely and then finish with intention.
Magical Forest with Watercolor Fairies
I have also made a watercolor course about this kind of intuitive nature painting: Magical Forest.
Magical Forest combines light with hope, trees with spirituality, water with flow, and wilderness with curiosity.
Flower or Fairy?
In this work on Aquabord, I first thought that the weird purple flower could be enough of a character. But after looking at the flower for a while, I felt that someone was squatting under it.
And it wasn’t a shy spirit either, but quite lively.
I even painted hands for her.
The butterfly flew there too as if by accident!
What Makes a Fairytale?
In my opinion, a watercolor painting with a fairy tale character can leave a lot of guesswork. The mystery is allowed! There may be abstract shapes that only describe the atmosphere rather than anything else.
When the shy watercolor fairies started appearing in my art in 2019, they represented the part of me that is needed for making art. Now my artist fairy is more confident and cooperative and is not afraid to appear when called.
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