Lattialla - On the Floor

Wax crayon. Rinta-Perälä, 2018.

Tietoisuus - Consciousness

Wax crayon. Rinta-Perälä, 2018.

Unknown Man by Uuno Kailas

Vieras mies

Olin kaikkialla vieras mies,
he katsoivat minua pitkään.
Joka paikasta halusin paeta pois,
mutta minne ikänä pakenin,
olin sielläkin vieras mies.
Koko maailman piirissä minulle
ei ollut rauhan sijaa.
Ja minua minussa raahasi
joku minulle vieras mies.

Unknown Man

Everywhere I was an unknown man,
they took a long look at me.
In every place I wanted to run away,
but wherever I ran,
I was again an unknown man.
I did not find a peaceful place
in the whole wide world.
And deep down I was always
drawn by some unknown man.

from Uni ja kuolema (Dream and Death, 1931)
translated by Rinta-Perälä

People like quotations, right?

"It's not the job of the artist to be rich, it's the job of the artist to look at what's going on and to be truthful. [...] I could go on all evening about what I think of the modern Brit artists who don't know anatomy and can't stretch their own canvases, can't build their own sculptures, can't draw even the most simple pictures and have no ideas whatsoever."

Melinda Gebbie, Nottingham Contemporary 2012

"Very few films anymore deal with what's happening. They've lost touch with reality. To me, there's been a dumbing down of the culture. You're all getting spun out, we're getting spun. We believe all this shit like it's the truth. Where can you go to get the truth now? It's hard to find it in your own life because we've all been so brainwashed by this junk that fills the airwaves and fills the movie screens. [...] Technically, cinema has become a place where everything is possible, but in fact there's very little truth to be found."

William Friedkin, Fade In Magazine 2012

"You can't do this stuff halfheartedly. You either give your guts to it and your balls to it and your heart to it and your soul to it or you don't do it at all. Why bother? You have to give everything to art, otherwise it's not going to be worth a damn, it's not going to linger, it's not going to be there after you're gone."

Clive Barker, The Man Behind the Myth

Jokainen näkee - Everyone Sees

Wax crayon. Rinta-Perälä, 2018.

Room for art. Everywhere

What am I trying to say with my drawings and compositions?

Well, let's start with this one:
You're not just hanging around with your buddies and scratching your nuts. This is something else.

I have to be able to say this without feeling like a complete outcast. There has to be room for something else. Something challenging or subtle that gets overlooked in today's fearful atmosphere.

Art is discovery. You can never take it for granted. Having room for art is like letting your inner world breathe and speak.

I always want more than I can achieve. I don't want to be stale and complacent. My experiments continue. I've been drawing and painting my whole life, I've written hundreds of notes and taken 6000 photographs. Most important of all, I've been collecting experiences.

The hunger for powerful and suggestive images and ideas will be here as long as we are here.

Bombs, caves, corpses, blood

Otto Dix

1891-1969

"1914-1918 Enlists voluntarily for military service in field artillery in Dresden."

"Dix experienced the war on the frontmost lines. [...] If one reads his observations on those years and compares the statements recorded 'on site' in his 'war journal' with those written from memory forty years later, one is struck by the uniform tenor. [...]
'I had to see it all for myself. I am such a realist, you know, that I have to see everything with my own eyes in order to confirm that that's the way it is.' Even as a young man, Dix was candid about himself as well as toward others, as one can see from the entries in his diary in 1915 and 1916: 'Lice, rats, barbed wire entanglements, fleas, grenades, bombs, caves, corpses, blood, schnaps, mice, cats, gases, cannons, filth, bullets, machine-guns, fire, steel, that's what war is! Nothing but the devil's work!'"

Eva Karcher
Otto Dix, Taschen 2012
English translation:
Doris Linda Jones and Jeremy Gaines

Muodostuminen - Formation

Wax crayon. Rinta-Perälä, 2018.

My current versus childhood 90s favourites

Current:

Films & TV
Misery (Rob Reiner, 1990)
Twin Peaks (1990–91)
The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991)
Candyman (Bernard Rose, 1992)
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (David Lynch, 1992)
Riget (1994–97)

Music
Mana Mana: Totuus palaa (1990)
Angelo Badalamenti: Soundtrack from Twin Peaks (1990)
Angelo Badalamenti: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)
Thorns: Trøndertun (1992)
Julee Cruise: The Voice of Love (1993)
Ved Buens Ende: Written in Waters (1995)

Childhood:

Films & TV
Tales from the Crypt (1989-96)
Total Recall (Paul Verhoeven, 1990)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (James Cameron, 1991)
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (Kevin Reynolds, 1991)
Army of Darkness (Sam Raimi, 1992)
Braindead (Peter Jackson, 1992)
Candyman (Bernard Rose, 1992)
The X-Files (1993-2002)

Music
YUP: Homo Sapiens (1994)
Moonspell: Wolfheart (1995)

Tervehdys - Greeting

Wax crayon. Rinta-Perälä, 2018.

Top 20 Italian soundtracks

Nino Rota
1954 La strada
1973 Amarcord

Ennio Morricone
1966 Come imparai ad amare le donne
1966 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
1968 Once Upon a Time in the West
1970 The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
1971 A Fistful of Dynamite
1971 A Lizard in a Woman's Skin
1971 Cold Eyes of Fear
1972 Who Saw Her Die?
1972 Four Flies on Grey Velvet
1972 Black Belly of the Tarantula
1975 Macchie solari
1976 Drammi gotici

Riz Ortolani
1972 Don't Torture a Duckling
1980 Cannibal Holocaust

Goblin
1975 Deep Red
1977 Suspiria

Amedeo Tommasi
1976 The House with Laughing Windows

Fabio Frizzi
1981 The Beyond

Unconsciously connected

An innocent straight arrow between Sin and Apple in 2016. 

What a harrowing coincidence.

"The way of our living is the blood pumping through our veins, the ability to sense and to feel and to know, and the intellect doesn't really help you very much there. You should get on with the business of living."

"All the great novels, the reason you go to read them is not the plot, it's for the philosophical asides, to find out who Ernest Hemingway is or who Steinbeck is or who Faulkner is..."

Ray Bradbury, Day at Night (interview program 1973-1974)

My drawings mainly express unconsciously connected things and emotions. Whatever makes the image or idea interesting to me has to be in the special DNA of the work itself. Details and references won't save the image. If I show my subconscious something intriguing it will give me in return something even more intriguing. I have to be active, emotional and patient.

I admire irreverent artists who have more fun with all kinds of ideas and who don't take things for granted (religious language or imagery, for example). I appreciate works that have a miraculous quality and aren't just satisfying on the surface.

Vuotava - Bleeding

Wax crayon. Rinta-Perälä, 2018.