Out-And-Out Belly-Up Bouffet

Dripping-based baked dust

Spaghetti with bloodsuckerballs

Toilet paper hot pot

Thanksgiving meltdown leftovers

Smokestack floaties

Barbecued scavenger skin

Vermin toast

Hawaiian downy mildew

Funk cake

Soot and sawdust tiramisu

Rust crispies

Heart in your mouth debris cookies

Cinnamon pest crunch

Vodka tuberculini

Freshly squeezed nerve juice

Long Island iced vinegar

I love black and white

Autumn by Hugo Simberg

Symbolism:

Odilon Redon (1840–1916), Edvard Munch (1863–1944),
Hugo Simberg (1873–1917)

German Expressionism:

Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945), Otto Dix (1891–1969)

Engravings, woodcuts and illustrations:

Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), Gustave Doré (1832–1883)

Finnish photography:

Matti A. Pitkänen (1930–1997)
- Seitsemän auringon yö (The Night of the Seven Suns, 1966)
- Kauneimmat maisemat (Most Beautiful Landscapes, 1984)

North American photography:

Edward S. Curtis (1868–1952)
- Visions of the First Americans (2006)

Man Ray (1890–1976)

Ansel Adams (1902–1984)

Roloff Beny (1924-1984)
- The Gods of Greece (1983)

Cinema:

Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889–1968)
- The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
- Vampyr (1932)
- Ordet (1955)

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980)
- Psycho (1960)

Kaneto Shindo (1912–2012)
- Onibaba (1964)
- Kuroneko (1968)

George Andrew Romero (1940–2017)
- Night of the Living Dead (1968)

David Lynch (1946)
- Eraserhead (1977)

Snow Globe Triptych - workshop painting

Acrylic. Rinta-Perälä, 2018.

Forming Moons - out in 2019

My debut film is in post-production.

Forming Moons is an expressionistic silent film with a narrative about painting and isolation.

Writing, direction, filming, production, performance, design, artwork, music and soundtrack by Tero Rinta-Perälä.

Complete list of my wax drawings 2014-2018

250 individual drawings.

Two questions for today's visual artists

When did you know you wanted to be a visual artist?

How would you describe the relationships you have with different works of art?

Forming Moons - my debut film

I have now shot 50 % of this experimental silent film. Poster will be added later.

Writing, direction, filming, production, performance, design, artwork, music and soundtrack by Tero Rinta-Perälä.

My top 10 films of all time

The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928)
Dreyer is one of the directors I most identify with. This silent film feels modern and extreme.

Vampyr (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932)
Visually engaging venture into dreams, nightmares and symbolism. Unified and iconic.

Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933)
Marx Brothers comedy packed with boundless invention and energy.

Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)
Films about identity, isolation, one person against insuperable odds fascinate me. I love revisiting this cinematic playground.

Repulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965)
Intimate expression of anxieties, fears and mental distortions.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)
A film that emphasized the character and idiosyncrasy of everything surrounding the plot. Still a refreshing experience in a world polluted with explanations and information.

Deep Red (Dario Argento, 1975)
Argento's films have a darker tone, but at the same time he's openly having fun with ideas. He has a special way of inventing spellbinding sequences.

Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977)
The first film that genuinely made me want to create and design my own film. I first saw Eraserhead when I was in my early teens and I fell in love with the world and the images. What impressed me was the way the images were built by the filmmakers.

Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977)
Even uncannier and more haunting than Deep Red. This is what I imagined when I started reading about Italian horror. Fortunately Suspiria gave me more than that and I'm very familiar with the daring soundtrack.

The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
Strangely captivating. Not the scariest, but an interesting one. I've always been sensitive to atmosphere and I'm also attracted to this film because of my family history.

The way

"You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not."

T. S. Eliot: East Coker (Four Quartets)

Workshop painting

Acrylic. Rinta-Perälä, 2018.

Interpretation of a poem by Arvia MacKaye Ege.

I'm still drawing primarily, but painting is something I like to experiment with. This one took 2 hours.

Currently making my first film and soundtrack

My independent film is in production. 1/3 shot. It's an experimental film with a narrative and I'm putting the whole thing together by myself.

Why I listen to classical music

I've been listening to classical music most of my life. Jean Sibelius and Dmitri Shostakovich were the composers who introduced me to classical music. Their works changed me, but I wasn't fearful. The music touched me before I could start listing all the things I already liked. I never worried whether I was the right person. It didn't even occur to me. I also didn't think I was better than someone else. It wasn't about that.

Later the works of Olivier Messiaen, Erik Satie, Krzysztof Penderecki and Louis Vierne changed me even more. Classical music was never just background music. Not even Erik Satie. I first heard Satie's Gymnopedie 1 when it played during a Swedish television test pattern. I was amazed because it found me. I wanted to find a recording of it that spoke to me the most.

How would I describe classical music? Enduring, ambitious, powerful, subtle, entrancing, extraordinary. It's not just one thing. Start listening to concertos, symphonies, nocturnes, quartets and cantatas from all periods. Stop worrying and fussing.

Favourite composers

Enkeli - Angel

Wax crayon. Rinta-Perälä, 2018.

Pyhä - Holy

Wax crayon. Rinta-Perälä, 2018.

Luolamies - Caveman

Wax crayon. Rinta-Perälä, 2018.