When thinking about my work as a performance artist it´s easy to admit that it started by force of my everyday life. I knew that my job is to make art. Circumstances at late eighties did not allow me to be a painter, so I had to find some other forms to work. I had to make my dreams and nightmares true by performance art.
The everyday life was rough, troubles with love and money, first of all with myself. There were periods with no reason to go to a grocery store but to take a sniff of all those wonderful scents. The aroma of bread and soap gave me faith to continue although the promised land was so far away. Still the star was shining in my heart. The day will come!
Thanks to pikes of Sammatti we had food even those days when I was totally broke. We hunted many great fishes from the small pound near by the wretched cottage of ours!
And thanks to the great artist and a friend of mine, Mr. Erkki Pirtola, he was the bond which kept me and world of art connected when I was sinking to the angry waves of life. Even now I can hear Erkkis spirit whispering: "...we have to do it..."
I´m thankful to my children and their mother, too. They had to face poverty when living with an artist like me. The sculls and bones of moose like the broken computers on our yard were signing our road from the past to modern life. Craziness! But they had to be there, those treasures!
Today I feel relieved when those days are over. Today is a good day. Art and life are blooming together.
