Art Luddite

Why draw hours meticulously to make one small etching? Why to spend weeks to complete a collage? World seems to yearn for space filling art, something that takes your attention by force by its size and loudness. Why make small size prints or harmonious mixed media collages that require endless balancing and take a lot of time to finish, quiet works that are so easy to miss?

One reason is that I don't like the spirit of our time, which demands entertainment and grand size. Nowadays art must be so big, unprecedented and something giving you ever more better emotional vibrations exhibition after exhibition. Computer assisted artmaking dominates the space, AI and other programs – artmaking tools as those who are using these tools tends to remind us – are getting better and better. 

Hundred years ago it took easily months or even years to complete one challenging sculpture. Now it's possible for one artist using these tools to fill the whole museum space in the same period of time. No wonder that the computer with its programs is the main instrument for so many contemporary artists. 

So, why am I reluctant to count in AI and other computer programs to my toolbox? Maybe because I want to think as much as possible with my own brains and to use my own hands. And to maintain the art making tradition which is linked to handicraft. Yes, I know that my attitude here is an old fashioned one and it's easy to contradict. But anyway. It’s the stance I have taken. For me art is not something I generate (more or less) with applications, but something I make from start to finish with my hands and brains. This choice I have made has become even more important now when the whole world seems to fuss around AI, and along with it, the new possibilities to create more and mode astounding aesthetic experiences. I want to draw a clear line between me and computerized artmaking.

Sure, a computer is a good tool. I'm not denying it. For writing this text, for example, or keeping a web page in order. But even when I write I handwrite the text first. Thinking happens simultaneously with writing and drawing and I don't want to outsource this to the applications. Hand, pen and paper are connected to thinking and memory. It’s also a matter of professional pride. I want to be capable of thinking, writing, drawing and painting myself. It feels good to know that I can. Even if the whole world is turning to be more and more profoundly automated in all fields of society – art included – I will continue to be a manual, handmade man. An art Luddite. Fuck AI. 

Gunnar did remember Oluf

What is the meaning of an artist's life? What remains after s/he is gone? These questions popped up recently when I came across Danish artist Oluf Høst two times within a short period of time.

At the end of May I visited the Oluf Høst Museum at Bornholm. Museum is a house that used to be his home and a studio. A place with a nice garden at the outskirts of a romantic seaside village Gudhjem. And a few weeks later I noticed one of Oluf Høst’s paintings at Didrichsen Art Museum in Helsinki. That painting was purchased to the collection after the death of the artist, by Danish born art collector Gunnar Didrichsen, a successful entrepreneur and the founder of the museum.

Oluf Høst (1884–1966) was a painter who married his fellow art student and moved back to his birth island Bornholm 1929 at the age of 45, painting, with expressionistic style, mostly local sceneries by Bognemark farm till his death 1966. The painting in Didrichsen Art Museum’s collection is one of those Bognemark landscapes dated 1963. Høst was 79 when he painted it. So, he was a local artist for 37 years, the most of his career.

For me it was somehow consoling that a collector wanted to support the artist’s name, to help us to remember someone who so easily fades away like the majority of all names of mankind. Gunnar Didrichsen must have seen something valuable, something worth retaining at Høst’s painting.

Oluf Høst’s painting at Didrichsen Art Museum in Helsinki.

It is not enough that an artist makes a piece of art. The artwork can’t survive forever without someone to take care of it, someone who sees the work and wants to maintain it. Without collectors – whether individuals or institutions – art can't be remembered. If there were no Oluf Høst Museum and collectors like Gunnar Didrichsen, I would know (most likely) nothing about this Danish artist. He was not so important from an art historical point of view.

I would know nothing about his artist wife Hedvig who abandoned her own career to support Oluf’s career – which was a pity because she definitely had potential. And without these instruments of remembering – museums and collectors – I would know nothing about the family’s Nazi connection and tragedy related to that, or about his son Ole's artist dream that was cut short.

Portrait of artist’s father at Oluf Høst Museum, Bornholm.

Now I even know something about Oluf's father by looking at his portrait which is conserved. Not only artists are remembered but their models also. In general, art is full of memories and information. Art helps to remember and museum is a place of remembrance.

Artist’s working table at Oluf Høst Museum, Bornholm.

Right now there are millions of visual artists in the world making art and I’m one of them. Most of us will sink into oblivion at some point in the future. From the point of view of remembering lucky ones are those whose works are widely collected.

Oluf Høst’s grave at Gudhjem graveyard.

The Lines of Creativity

What is creativity? What is creative drawing? How does creativity show itself in artwork, in etching? Can you see it just by looking at the print? These and other questions have troubled my mind lately. Etching and intaglio printmaking is quite technical, or even mechanical printmaking technique. Often when the first idea pops up, that seems to be the most inventive part of the work. So it seems. The latter part of the work is a series of practical methods, phases of work. You just follow the etching procedure, the same that has been available for centuries. 

Is there room, in this etching routine, for creativity. I think that you can’t be creative by hassling with the etching technique - or you can, but it is not wise to try to invent a new etching method every time you make a piece. Etching is a drawing done by line. Creativity is linked to the drawing process, which is often slow and arduous.

To draw on a plate covered with hard ground is so different from drawing on paper. On paper you can adumbrate, hesitate and proceed carefully and wipe off something easily. But when you draw on an etching plate there is no room for preliminary lines or sketching. Whatever you draw is there. Polishing some lines away is not such an easy task to do. It's so painstaking that it’s better to leave everything as it comes out after the acid bath.

There is a hint of uncertainty and unpredictability intertwined to the drawing process. And that’s maybe the place where creativity thrives. You must think that there are no mistakes, but challenges and drawing situations and problems you have to solve by drawing more lines on the plate. To make an etching is a creative journey you do with lines.

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The Art Gallery Dilemma at Espoo

I’m living and working in Espoo, the City next to Helsinki. Espoo is the second biggest city in Finland with more than 300000 habitants. Still, Espoo is a place you pass on your way to Helsinki without noticing it. It’s like a large suburb area on the west side of the capital. You can’t find road signs indicating the remaining kilometers to Espoo, because there aren’t any. All roads lead to Helsinki. 

There is no city center in Espoo, but several “centers” around big shopping malls. There is no proper public transport inside Espoo. But, as I said, all roads, railway and metro goes to Helsinki. Cultural life, cinema and libraries, is connected to Espoo’s shopping malls and to places where the metro passes. 

There is one art gallery at Sello’s shopping mall, the one the local art society Espoon kuvataiteilijat keeps. And there are few library related and other spaces for sunday painters to exhibit their watercolors. But there are no galleries held by professional gallerists in Espoo. All gallery life and exhibitions are happening at Helsinki. 

Maybe the reason for this is that gallerists don’t believe in Espoo as a proper market place to have a gallery. Espoo is a bit of an unfriendly environment for galleries with its shopping mall centers. What would be an ideal place for a gallery in Espoo? I have lived and worked here for decades and I know the city. But I have no idea what might be a good place for an art gallery. Somewhere near The Art Museum Emma? Maybe.

If I want to see art I go to Helsinki. For me it’s easier to go to Helsinki than to the Emma Art Museum at Tapiola, in the southern part of Espoo. And there is still that question: Why go only to Emma when there are multiple choices and so much more to see in Helsinki?

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Let's Start

I’ve just started to make etchings for the first time this year. In spring I got The Oxford Partial Knee implant for my right knee. The recovery has been a bit complicated and slow. So, I have not been able to do much art since the operation. But now, at last, I’m back in “business.” This half a year period might be the longest pause in artmaking I've ever had. 

There was a lot of dust at the atelier. And intaglio hard ground doesn’t like dust. Cleaning the space and wiping off the dust is always a good starting point of printmaking. And arranging the tools and other stuff, and checking the acid. Even ferric chloride gets too old finally. This acid I’m using now is not in the most biting condition. I need to buy a new canister very soon. Nothing is more annoying than after arduous hours of drawing the acid fails you and all effort was done for nothing. 

It feels nice to be at the atelier after such a long time. And it’s interesting to see if this break has any effect on me… has it been a positive or negative thing for my art. Let my life after Oxford begin.

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