Take away the iPhone

Why is it that blog post ideas always seem to come to me while I’m just about to go to sleep, herding toddlers or holding a filthy diaper, none of which are convenient moments to take down notes (well, I guess I could grab the iPhone from the bedside and surreptitiously update my blog while sitting on the darkened stairs…and then accidentally delete the #%€!n’ thing in my fatigue and have to go downstairs and boot up the laptop…it just smacks of sleep-deprived desperation, note to self). It’s time to move the old holiday post along, make way for new ideas, new projects, for the new year.  The studio is clear of non-art detritus, daycare is back on and I promise the baby will start to sleep (which means there’s hope that my brain will function at full capacity some day). Stay tuned for some painting…

Christmas Card Set, watercolor illustrations, 2011

(Cards available at www.kaminenmosher.com, original illustrations available by request.)

Boxed sets of greeting cards, especially Christmas cards, has always made sense to me. Maybe it’s because we always had lovely boxed sets of greeting cards from the Metropolitan Museum of Art when I was a child; my mother worked as a Senior Restorer in the Objects Conservation at the Met and the employee discount at the museum shop was handy. Each boxed set had a selection of three or more images, and it made sending many cards at once practical and fun; I still like to play the “who-gets-which-image” game.

I can’t find boxed card sets being sold anywhere in Finland. The post office, local markets and stationery stores carry only individual cards. Also, the variety and choice of illustrations is surprisingly limited – is everyone sending each other the same cards over and over? Sure, one can order “personalized” greeting cards from internet photo-printing companies, but where’s the style and whimsy in that? Finland has a long tradition in greeting card correspondence on a massive scale over major holidays, so I’m surprised that collections packs of cards aren’t readily available.

For past Christmas seasons I have made cards by hand (very tedious and glue everywhere) and sent out email holiday missives (when small of budget), but this year I decided to create my own boxed set of holiday greeting cards (and by boxed set I mean really more like “variety pack” as I don’t have actual boxes, maybe next year).

I chose to create watercolor children’s illustrations of animals I have known as pets (current and departed) in fanciful scenes as a way to evoke the playful, lighthearted side of the holiday season, what any (inner) child could appreciate. The watercolors have a definite echo of the children’s illustrations my mother has painted over the years, and I did them also in part to remind my mother of the fun to be had in picking up a paint brush and just letting colors and imagination flow over paper.

(For more of Marjukka Kaminen’s work go to www.kaminen.com, original watercolors available by request.)

Portrait, Artist and Professor Rauli Svento

Friday September 16th, 2011, was a very exciting day for me. That afternoon was the reveal of Professor Rauli Svento’s portrait, which was my very first commissioned official portrait. Or how I slipped up and described it to the Dean of the Business School as ‘my first official commissioned portrait’, which sounds like it was my very first commission, officially, ever. To makes things clear: it is an official, public portrait of Professor Rauli Svento, commissioned to celebrate his 60th birthday and his distinguished career at Oulu University (and he’s not done yet!). It will hang in the Oulu Business School (Oulu University Linnanmaa campus, here is a link to the university posting about the event).

Professor Rauli Svento has worn many hats during his career at Oulu University: researcher, professor, Dean of Economics and Business Administration and Vice-President of Oulu University. He played a central role in building the Business School program from the ground up and as a co-creator of the Matti Ahtisaari Institute.

Professor Rauli Svento was a brilliant sitter to paint, and that superlative works in two ways: he has a very amiable and easygoing character that brought a calm focus to the painting process, and his intelligence and perceptive nature made for very interesting topics of conversation. It’s not every day that I get the chance to pick the brain of a top-notch economist, what with all the global market explosions going on these days.

The portrait was composed in shades of blue, blue being Professor Rauli Svento’s suggestion and preference. I  see it as a direct challenge to all those brown and muddy-grey toned portraits that can be found lurking the halls of universities and hospitals, remnants of a pseudo-cubism episode of portraiture here in Finland that just won’t die.

The portrait was completed over a course of six sittings in the spring of this year. I tried to keep the light consistent by scheduling each sitting for the same time in the mid-morning. The painting was started in semi-defuse sunlight conditions, so I was thrown off one morning, near the completion of the portrait, when the sun came out from behind the clouds and light popped through two windows at once. It was a surprise (I had forgotten how spring sunlight came in the room, due to the long, miserably dark winter) and I was excited to put down new colors and highlights, but I had to stop and control the impulse to capture that specific moment of light because it would have upset the balance of the composition. Plus, people would probably have wondered at the strange light situation and ignored the subject.

Six sittings seemed like a lot of time (average 2-3 hours each) when I initially scheduled it, but it was just sufficient for painting the face. I used photographs taken at a few sessions (under different weather conditions) as references for modelling the suit, tie and backdrop in between sittings. As I couldn’t step back from the portrait during the sittings (I still need a studio, surprise!), I also referred to the photographs to correct any blunders in the drawing/likeness.

Professor Rauli Svento, oil on canvas, 70cm x 56cm, 2011

Oh, wow, I have a blog. I forgot. My pitiful excuse for such blatant blog-neglect is sleep deprivation  (see way way below).

To fill in the gaps since the last post: sleep-deprived-night followed by raucous baby-and-toddler filled day, set on loop, irregardless of date or circumstance. Insert some sanity and/or creativity in there somewhere, …please.

Once again, through the tireless assistance of my husband (while on his vacation, poor thing) and my mother (who could also use some time in the studio) I’ve been able to squeeze in a few hours here and there to complete another portrait commission for a Helsinki University professor (which will be revealed later in October) and gradually develop a handful of figurative works. And I mean gradually. When my husband comes into the studio to peek at the day’s progress, after I’ve proudly announced to him that I “painted three hours today!”, all he can do is ask, with a polite smile, what exactly is different?

While it takes me only a couple of hours to model a face or hands in oil paint, it can take me hours upon hours to paint one layer of those blobby (my new “technical” term), abstract shapes, and then I have to wait a day or two to painstakingly render the next layer. This process goes light-years faster when done in acrylic paint, but I prefer the texture, handling and surface of oil paint (and ever since those university days when I would sleep, eat and paint in the same apartment room, I love the smell of oil paint too; no, I did not use solvents in enclosed spaces). I’m attempting to fuse figurative with blobby abstraction, and I prefer to use oil with the figurative work, so that means I have to be patient…

A little patience is a good thing for studio practice, but little patients aren’t.

View from boat house at Taidekeskus Salmela (Note: Huge swarms of mosquitoes hang around in damp, dark boathouses in Finland.)

There was a surprise mini heatwave last weekend, and it luckily coincided with the opening ceremonies (PARTY!) for Taidekeskus Salmela‘s grand summer exhibition. The gorgeous weather brought with it a huge crowd and a general good mood (unless you sat in the direct sunshine for too long, or in the shadows near the water where the mosquitoes lurked).

I went to the party with husband and baby girl in tow. (I left the rest of the teeming horde of children at home with grandma.) I’m always a bit timid at these sort of public functions, and I hid behind the prettily dressed baby most of the time. Unfortunately for me, the baby-as-social-manager only really works at family/friends sort of dos, helping avoid small-talk awkwardness (who doesn’t have something to say about a baby, cute or not). At large art events, people are sizing up each other, their networking angle and the art (in that order), so babies are more like messy accessories that need to be avoided (and kept away from the art and hors d’oeuvres).

Of course I enjoyed bumping into a few familiar colleagues and friends. I really should get out to these events more often, for the news and gossip, not to mention potential exhibition opportunities I’ve missed out on. My spoken Finnish is still halting and limited, so I (pathetically) relied on the English proficiency of everyone else.

I did dash out in front of the cameras once (though it could have ended badly with me embarrassing myself, or maybe I did anyway), at the closing-ceremony/speeches, when all the exhibition artists stood for a photo-op and flowers. There wasn’t any artist roll call, and I didn’t shout an introduction for myself, so maybe that little sprint was all for naught.

From what I was told, my paintings, hanging in the bar-corner section of the Kesäheinä restaurant are in a ‘cash’n'carry’ type of area, meaning that if they were sold and the buyers decide to leave with them then and there, no one else will see them later in the exhibition. I can’t decide how I feel about that; on the one hand it would be fantastic to sell everything, and on the other, a drag that they wouldn’t be on view the entire summer.

While we were there a red mark had been put next to one painting, so I quickly took pictures of the set-up, just in case, for posterity. Here’s what they looked like as of 11.6.2011:

"Poi'itus" and "Mummi ja vaavi"

"Veden lumous" and "Ajatusten vaihtoa"

Interior view with paintings (door), restaurant Kesäheinä (not my camera on the table, wish it was!)

(If anyone visits the show later in the summer and could give me an update, that would be fantastic!)

Petra has many small children, the youngest of which was born in January, so understandably she was not able to attend in person. She paints the Lappish landscape around her and children, such as are in the paintings hanging in the summer cabana…(from Salonjokilaakso, June 9, 2011, a free local newspaper, translated by me)

I’m not sure how two young children turned into ‘many’, maybe the reporter was taking sloppy notes and got confused when s/he saw my paintings of several children on a pier. With ‘many’ young children it would be understandable if I don’t get out much. I find it challenging finding the time to paint with two small children, let alone ‘many’! And another point, even though I live in the Oulu area, which is way up and out there (compared to where I’ve lived in the US), I do not, technically, live in Lapland. That’s another…well, about 31 miles north from here! I guess anywhere above Tampere seems like the great tundra to those southerners (Turku and Helsinki residents).

To sign off on a positive note, the regional newspaper Turun Sanomat did refer in passing to my portraits as painted “in the spirit of traditional national romanticism” (see Halonen, Pekka; Edelfelt, Albert and Gallen-Kallela, Axeli).

This is the portrait right at that stage after I have finished the underdrawing, still in the first sitting. I totally spaced on taking a photograph (for posterity) of the underdrawing, so you’ll just have to believe me that it exists under the paint. I thought I would have a difficult time drawing my father due to me being self-conscious or nervous. It’s not an unfounded worry – I’ve been tripped up by my nerves when I have tried to draw or paint my mother. But now that I think about it, that was probably due to the fact that my mother is an accomplished artist, and I got a bit of stage fright. It also didn’t help that she would stare back at me and smile – staring back at the portraitist is a sure way to unnerve him/her and get a wacky portrait. (My father appropriately, and with my direction, chose a ‘lost-in-thought’ pose, which is quite natural for him.)

This is how the portrait looked after the second sitting. I was using only natural light, so I had to contend with some cloudy days and one day where the sun beamed down and nearly burned my retinas (or so it felt, after months of seemingly no sun at all). My father was sat next to the kitchen window, which faces south. Using just north-facing windows at this latitude is a bit too dark, at least in my studio. Any questions? Ok, moving on…

So at this point my father has already arrived back home in Vermont, and I have to work from photographs of the sittings to complete the background and shirt. I used this portrait as a ‘work-in-progress’ demonstration at the Oulu Construction (Builders’) Fair (see my post from the same fair the year before here), which I realize now, is asking for trouble when the model is not present. I painted some funny shapes in the shirt and didn’t know how to get myself out of such a painting predicament in front of a (sparse) crowd. Though one could argue that all my paintings consist basically of funny shapes, so what was the problem. The problem was that I couldn’t explain my abstraction style or why I was painting a portrait upside down to every passerby.

Here is the finished portrait. Instead of painting a definite background, I decided to focus on creating an atmosphere that complemented the pose and that also hinted at my father’s affection for Finland and Finnish culture. His shirt and vest reminded me of traditional Finnish clothing, and the cloth pattern implied in the background is referenced from a Marimekko pattern from the 1960′s.

Westers Garden (Puutarha) – arSboretum 11

Three of my new portrait/figurative work will be shown in the Westers Garden gallery space. The arSboretum 11 exhibition is open from June 4th to August 27th, 2011 (4.6. – 27.8.2011), and the opening evening is on June 4th 12 – 6pm. More information can be found at www.westers.fi.

Taidekeskus Salmela – Summer Exhibition (Kesänäyttelyt)

Four of my newest portrait/figurative work will be shown in the exhibition center restaurant, Ravintola Kesäheinä. The summer exhibition is open from June 11th to August 7th, 2011 (11.6. – 7.8.2011). There will be an ‘information opportunity’ where the exhibition artists talk about their work (and which I will be attending too)* on Tuesday June 7th at the art center. More information about times and place at www.taidekeskussalmela.fi.

West Branch Gallery & Sculpture Park

Two of my abstract oil paintings and some abstract watercolors will be included in the upcoming group exhibition (the exhibition will spotlight artists Rebecca Kinkead and Adelaide Tyrol). The exhibition runs from July 9th to August 7th (9.7. – 7.8.2011). The opening reception will be on July 9th 6 – 9pm. For more information go to www.westbranchgallery.com.

*As I can only attend either the information session or the opening party, I decided to be fabulous at the opening party. Hopefully no one spills/falls into/takes a fork to my paintings during the opening party brunch, which will be at the art center’s Restaurant Kesäheinä. I’ll be there to defend it, either from metaphorical or edible slings and arrows.

Little girl taking in the studio goings-on.

Baby taking in the sights and sounds (and definitely smells, oil paint etc) of the studio while its mother paints away furiously – oh how bohemian! By the end of the second month the baby’s curiosity sort of bloomed and I discovered that I could paint while she was awake, albeit if there’s a bit of entertainment thrown in. So far she seems to smile more at the abstract paintings or the abstract blotches in the portraits… Her older brother, now a month shy of 2 years old, has learned to be wary of running into the studio, and he’s now able to expend energy, like the little fireball son/sun (haha, erm) that he is, at daycare three days a week. Those are my precious (almost-)alone-in-the-studio days.

(The blue painting on the left is a portrait of my father from when he came over the pond for a long-overdue visit. The painting on the right is a portrait of a family friend in the course of his job as a large-animal veterinarian.)

Working in my (appropriated room) studio and watching the kids at home leaves me in a feedback/criticism vacuum. I take feedback from where-ever I can find it, including non-verbal kids. My own in-house, baby-as-art-critic, times two. A smile, coo, gurgle or, best of all, a hard, wide-eyed sustained stare at a painting that I’m working on is small encouragement, seeing as a 3-month old or 2-year old don’t have any art history or (horror!) art criticism backgrounds. I figure that on a basic level, if the colors and compositions I create appeal to the eyes and sensibilities of children, then I’ve captured a bit of wonderment on canvas.

A painting doesn’t have to be ‘childish’ to appeal to children. The substance of my paintings is not the literal subject, but the compositional interpretation in color, light and form. I want the second and third glance at a painting not because of some shocking subject matter, but because the composition is stimulating and intricate, something the viewer wants to come back to and savor. Young children respond to and are fascinated by contrasts in shape, color and number, and the adult brain will also respond to those same contrasts and intricacies  in the same fundamental way, despite years of education and socialization. Unfortunately young, non-verbal children can’t tell me when a shade of red should be taken down a notch, or that the composition should be shifted 10 cm over to the left.

Baby's-eye-view of work in progress.

Busy moment at the easel. Deadline!

It’s been two onerous months of feed baby/kids then paint, change diapers then paint, no sleep then paint, want to collapse but still need to clean the house and try to sew curtains on a whim…then paint. It’s only after hitting the deadline that I understood that setting a goal of three medium-to-large sized paintings completed in two months while taking care of a newborn was a tad unrealistic.

I’ve been working under an inky cloud of continuous sleep deprivation. At first I considered this a test of mental and emotional strength, something to overcome and shunt aside so that I could get on with painting. Then I read a few science news articles reporting on the cumulative effects of sleep deprivation (except those lucky “short-sleeper” b*stards!) as well as the suspected impact toxoplasmosis may have on human reaction times and behavior (I’m just 19 cats short of being a crazy cat person, if my husband would let me). So the $100,000 question has to be: by how much has my artistic ability been impaired recently? Should I be worried? Did I miss a “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” moment because I might have had a micro-sleep incident or two?

How well I can compose a painting when composing a sentence at the dinner table is a challenge (I’ve given up mid-sentence on several occasions). As I’ve mentioned before I like to listen to NPR programming while I work in the studio. Radiolab’s most recent (fantastic as always) podcast, Desperately Seeking Symmetry, made me wonder about the ‘aha!’ moment in artistic composition, similar to the ‘clicking’ moment discussed in Lauren Silbert’s research. If sleep deprivation is robbing me of the ability to be coherent in language, which is a verbal creative process, how much of the visual creative process is impeded too? Does anyone have research on this? Jad and Robert, help!

Another Radiolab episode I have to mention is Sleep. What better radio could one listen to when one is not able to get any, sleep that is. I wish I could sleep with one half of my brain and take care of midnight feeds with the other half awake, like a duck. Maybe then I’d have at least half my brain function at optimal performance. You know another interesting fact about ducks…learn more during the Radiolab episode Sperm. You’ll thank me.