Art questions July 2022

 

Q: How do you promote classical music to people who say they don't know anything about it?

A: Classical is not all the same. Start listening to all kinds of composers from all periods. Don't worry about target audiences. Don't worry about your own limitations either.

Classical doesn't need to be made sexier. If you're trying to push some cheesy crap like "classical for headbangers", you are completely on the wrong path.

We have had things like symphonic metal for decades. A lot of these bands aren't really changing anything. Usually they're just writing metal music, not classical.

As a listener, expand your horizons. As a composer, write the music you can't find.

Romanssi - Romance

Wax crayon / wax on paper. Rinta-Perälä, 2022. 

Drawing 402.

Pavunvarsi - Beanstalk

Wax crayon / wax on paper. Rinta-Perälä, 2022. 

Drawing 401.

Art questions June 2022

Q: How do you promote yourself? 

A: I haven't figured out a good way to do that. It's so easy to say: go out there and promote yourself. What if they don't know what the hell I'm talking about? What if the atmosphere is so putrid that anyone promoting real creativity is immediately excluded? 

You can't promote everything the same way. We all know what happens when you try to homogenise the markets. The bar gets lower and lower. 

People should stop reducing everything to numbers. You can't even see all the numbers in one place. We exist outside of that system. Anyone taking this seriously should be focusing on the work itself. I don't care about ratings. 

I don't even have a wikifeet rating. Is it worse to have a low rating than no rating at all? You should know. Apparently you're all number fanatics. We are people not numbers. It's time to fight back.

New track and album announcement

Thundering Cascade

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcYSow0tWz4

Night of the Seven Suns - album out August 27, 2022.

Night of the Seven Suns is my 20th album and it was inspired by material I wrote 20 years ago. It is similar to my first album released in 2012.

Night of the Seven Suns is also a 1966 photo book by Matti A. Pitkänen. It portrays a year in the wilds of Kuusamo. Titles on the album were taken from the book. Original Finnish texts by Airi Hast.

Music, artwork and production by Rinta-Perälä. Written between 2000 and 2021. Recorded in Silence & Desolation Studio, December 2021 - February 2022.

It used to be OK to talk about unknown artists

It's hard to think of anything so desperately stupid as blatant status worship.

If I see something stupid, I'm going to call it stupid. I don't want to live in a world filled with assholes. If the way you describe the world and your audience sounds stupid, what does that say about your so-called audience?

It is extremely cynical to focus on the mechanics instead of the motives. To think that every artist's success is based on likes, hashtags, mainstream endorsements, transactional garbage and pretence. That every musician's dream is to be included in some cheeseball playlist.

I'm criticising the masses without mentioning age. Anyone can make these mistakes. It doesn't matter how old you are. I have never talked about a specific generation, but what I'm going to talk about is the future.

My art is rarely about predicting the result. When people call an artist a prophet, they are talking about the artist's visionary qualities, not marketing strategies. It is the result of exploration and tireless dedication. The result of asking the right questions instead of memorising the right answers.

If this doesn't continue, creativity will not have a future.

Art questions May 2022

Q: You are a one-man filmmaker. Is there any element of filmmaking you dislike?

A: I hate trailers. I have always hated them and they did nothing for my imagination, unlike posters.

I recently saw Four Flies On Grey Velvet again and I saw the Italian trailer for the first time. It's one of my favourite trailers because it was designed. They had some props from the film but they shot some simple things for the trailer. That's how you do it. Make a trailer that creatively represents your film.

It's funny because this interesting film was obscure for years, but the trailer is one of the best I've seen. I still haven't made any myself.

400 Wax Drawings - Artist Retrospective

2014: The beginning of my crayon-eraser drawing technique and experimental photography.

January 2014. I'm drawing spontaneously with a black crayon and rubbing the wax with my fingers until I get blisters. Then I pick up an eraser and smear the wax without stopping to think. That energy will never leave me. After I make the first marks on a watercolour sheet, I can't put it down. I don't have a pile of unfinished works or 50 drafts of one thing.

I'm doing this because of the ideas. As a self-taught artist whose visual and musical skills run in the family, I understand the importance of curiosity. Today's art in general is quite weak in terms of ideas. True imagination is something you radiate.

As the title of my first display in 2017 suggests, the subconscious and natural forces are my main influences. The metaphysical element in my drawings is something that represents those forces, not just something "abstract."

Am I trying to shock? A response like shock is linked to an element of surprise. Shocking requires intelligence. If you don't have that, or if you're not an interesting person, the response is embarrassment.

63 out of 400 Finnish drawing titles begin with the letter K. The fact that C is not a Finnish letter is the only explanation I can think of. The process of coming up with a title is just as intuitive as my drawing technique. The list of titles is essentially a list of things and emotions. Connecting them in fascinating ways is my life's mission.

Kadonnut - Missing

Wax crayon / wax on paper. Rinta-Perälä, 2022. 

Drawing 400.

Kliseitä - Cliches

Wax crayon / wax on paper. Rinta-Perälä, 2022. 

Drawing 399.

Koti-ikävä - Homesickness

Wax crayon / wax on paper. Rinta-Perälä, 2022. 

Drawing 398.

Tell me about your worst awards ceremony experience and don't lie or I'll know

The Silence of the Slaps

Second ink drawing in the Imaginary Horror Comedy series.

Vortice Neuro: You Don't Miss Your Art

Music, artwork, lyrics and production by Rinta-Perälä.
Recorded in Silence & Desolation studio, August - September 2021.

You Don't Miss Your Art is the second Vortice Neuro album and the 19th album by Rinta-Perälä.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb-9qEEl1FU

https://vorticeneuro.bandcamp.com

Industrial punk

My new spine-chilling ink drawing

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mambo Number Five

First in the Imaginary Horror Comedy series.

Art questions April 2022

Q: Have you ever written poetry?

A: Yes, in 2012. I experimented with different methods and realised that I would rather do it in the form of drawings, films and titles. Those methods are still useful and I now have ideas for short stories.

The stories will be written in Finnish first and then translated into English. I get ideas in both languages but I'm more confident in Finnish when it comes to sentences.