Landscape as a Face of God
I see that I´d like to rush to handle my performance art but it´s necessary to show also some paintings from those earlier years and decades. So, I´ll take a throwback to the seventies!
Painting landscape was totally old-fashioned in Finnish visual arts at that time. But for me it was a way to study painting, to learn to work as an artist. The pictures did not appear without work. It was inspiring to read from books how Vincent van Gogh wandered with his equipment on the yellow fields with crows above his head. But to read about those things was not enough for me, I had to carry my empty canvas on the fields too!
There were numerous artists whose work I admired. The French impressionists as August Renoir, Claude Monet, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and many others were my stimulators. One of those Frenchmen was named Camille Pissarro. His paintings were amazing ones. The best one was "Neige à Louveciennes", "Snow at Louveciennes". The Finnish painter Pekka Halonen was also a master of wintry landscapes.
The art museums of Europe were full of masterpieces! No need to paint more landscapes! And still I had to do just that! Alright, they are masters, their paintings are hanging on the walls of museums, I do not want to compete with them. And how to compete with praying? Painting landscape was a prayer for me. Most of all it was listening. I listened to the sounds around me and the sounds inside me. Somebody was talking to me, someone was teaching me. Try Pekka, don´t give up! You can do it! Make a colorful prayer!
I have not yet achieved, but who knows, maybe some day. Painting landscape is not over!