It has been four weeks on Steemit and I have just reached my 100th follower. (It is little more now few days later but anyway). It has been quite an experience learning how all of this works and seeing people get excited about posting stuff and reading about varying interesting topics or seeing the talent of other artists.
I made the sign few days ago aswell. This is a rare picture of me wearing something other than black. The painting on the wall is one of my facourite pieces called mindscape
I started out with an introductory post, in which I told about my profession. It was basically an artist’s statement. It didn’t go too well. I think I’m going try do it properly now and tell you about myself and where I come from.
I am a 35 year old visual artist from Lahti Finland. My interests come and go in orbits of varying diameters; besides my own work consisting mainly of paintings and drawings, I do some different stuff in a group called Hydra. I like to go to exhibitions and I don’t mind going to the theater if I can get free or discount tickets. I’m into playing games on pc – console would be fine but I dropped out of the race this generation. I have been in a loose addiction to Ark survival evolved for a while but Steemit is winning at the moment. I like to watch a lot of TV series, movies and documentaries from time to time or enjoy a book or podcast on philosophy or other subject. Comic books are long term love affair also. I like to cook or bake occasionally - nothing too fancy though. I like learning new skills, but I don’t know how to drive. Few years ago I was into growing some chilies on a hydroponic system. Sometimes I dream of doing things like making my own little game, or soldering all my broken earbud cords. I work few hours a week at the local artists association trying to keep the computers and printers alive- especially when the grant season hits.
That is the short version, if you would like to dive deeper carry on reading. I must warn that it gets quite personal and can be quite a long and heavy dealing with a lot with alcoholism and depression .
Reason I’m writing this autobiography is that I’ve spent a lot of time on pondering about my role in society as an artist over the years; I started this process when I was working on my thesis at the Institute of Fine Arts as I felt my work lacked some depth or connection to the world on some personal level that in my mind was the justification of my chosen profession. Maybe it didn’t lack anything precisely and it was only a feeling I had. I was terrified of writing it but it had to be done. It is where I first laid out my story as part of the thesis; it was titled Addicted to Chaos as reference to the Megadeth song. Though I believe there is the desire in every artist to be noticed, the feeling I’m getting from exposing myself in this manner is a bit sickening. I am a very restrained person to a level of debility. The reasons are in my story I believe, and this is part of working it all out and moving beyond it to become a better artist and person. I’ve figured my job as an artist is to try my best to relate my experience of the world back to it. This text won’t make bad paintings better but maybe it will complement and help understand my art? I don’t know but I hope there is some value in it for someone.
There were some major events in the world that happened during this time, it may be interesting to reflect them against this story; couple of economic booms and depressions and such. I’ll leave that up to you. This is my story so far and of course this is not all of it; there is so much that has happened and some things are not mine to share. Some of it may be a little out of sequence as memory plays tricks. So here it goes; straight to the blockchain, against all the advice on keeping it professional…
I was born in the city of Vaasa in 1981. My father taught in the school of economics and has done a lot of different things related to trade, but maybe most importantly he is an enthusiastic fisherman. My mother is a dentist, though now she is retired. My mother has done also a lot in her time; among other things she did modeling and taught biology in school. She had a son from a previous marriage; my big brother who I worshipped. Soon I would come to have another brother and a sister few years later. We had a house and a summer cabin near my father’s hometown in middle-Finland and a white Mercedes-Benz, which was a big deal apparently. My first memories are clips from here and there, suppose starting from 3 years old. Before that It is rumored that I learned to place my hand on my mouth before coughing while I was in the stroller and that I would eat raw fish from a dog bowl while visiting some friends of the family. I remember playing with my brothers gaming console, it made intense sounds and had controllers on which you would place a cardboard to show what buttons to press and a golden dial on the bottom. I’ve only recently learned that it was Intellivision and I would really want to have one, it is like my Rosebud. A while ago I saw a video of the game Nightstalker and the haunting monotonous beat was just something blissful. My brother also had built Star Wars ships and other model kit planes, which we would fly around with my little brother- and crash unfortunately. We loved Star Wars; during my childhood we would watch the series over and over while my brother would read the subtitles to us. I remember us building a huge dragon out of snow with icicles as teeth. We moved couple of times back and forth between Vaasa and Jyväskylä, which would become my hometown. As the house was put on sale and we were about to move out, to joy of my parents I did my first mural on the wall with a ballpoint pen.
We did quite a lot of mischief in our time; in the next apartment we would try to dig a tunnel with a spoon under the bunk bed. I remember sticking tin knights into the VHS, which was kind of stupid as I enjoyed watching a lot of animations; stuff you would get at a gas station, Cave boy Rai being one that would inspire me a lot with its half blind gleamy eyed t-rex nemesis. We got our first X-Men and Spider-Man comics. On Christmas the Santa Claus came and brought us a big bag of toys. It was mom wearing a cheap plastic mask but she would not admit it. I remember hiding behind a linen chest and laughing with my father as my mother was throwing eggs at him. I remember the police banging on our door while trying to hold it close with my dad. I saw them break the security chain with a night stick and dragging him away. I remember watching the movie Alien, or Pink Panther cartoons alone in middle of the night.
My mom’s new boyfriend would take me to carnival where we watched guys on motorcycles ride the wall of death. My mom got quite mad at him when we came back, and so did my brother but they wouldn’t want to wake up when it was time to go. I heard later that this person stuck a fork in his girlfriends behind. There was a rumor in our city about a guy who would try to climb to a local church tower and scrape the gold of its dome, for some reason I have had the idea that it was this guy.
We moved again, this time to a nice house in a town nearby Jyväskylä. My mom was dating another guy; I think they got married as well. I remember seeing pictures of him in an army uniform but I’m not sure if he was an officer or what he did for living. He drove a BMW, liked to ski and play tennis and he read Remo books, I haven’t read them but I think I’m going to. When visiting his parents we would play get to play with old console that had some pong clone in it and watch cartoons from sky channel. We were not hit a lot as kids, but this one beat us religiously with the cord from his electric razor. I remember spilling milk carton and being unable to pick it up, as I just stared at him paralyzed while he was yelling at me. There was a girl living next door who showed where the leeches were in a small river and how to squeeze out the guts of tadpoles with her thumb. It is one of those moments that make me feel deep sadness when I think about it. An older boy from the neighborhood gave us an adult magazine to hide. We dug it in our backyard; the lump on the grass was pretty obvious; my mom would laugh, but I think we got whipped anyway.
We moved back to Jyväskylä where I went to kindergarten for a little while before I would start school in about 1988, I sit next to another guy in back row and we both drew transformers in our notebooks with the wax crayons. I remember him drawing a dragon that had each individual scale colored with a different color marker and I was very impressed. Often times I had asked my brother to draw a dragon for me, He was a pretty good at it. Later I used to go through his med school notes which were filled detailed drawings of bone structures. There was a Finnish TV-show which I loved called the observation class featuring some punk kids. To mirror the TV there was one kid that was dragged out of the class along with his desk that he would not let go off, crying and screaming to an observation one.
My brother would visit and we played on the commodore 64 at that time. My little brother was playing Commando for hours, eventually getting big burn on his hand from the Terminatorcontroller shaped like a grenade. We would watch ton of movies over the years like E.T., Conan the Barbarian, Superman, The Never ending Story, Lord of the Rings animation. There would be some my brother brought with him from US that were supposedly “uncut” like the Terminator. I was fascinated by the scenes where the terminator opened his arm, revealing the robotics under its skin and the eye. I wanted to be the Terminator - or He-Man which was the bomb at certain age. Unfortunately I tried the latter hairstyle during my first school years. Then there was the rat tail and a side stripe then luckily the T2 would come and save me with gelled up spiky buzz. It would be the 90s, Turtles and Simpsons came and everything was about being cool.
We moved halfway through my first year of school to another neighborhood, where we settled for a little longer. It was big row house apartment we all had our own rooms. We had nice furniture, some beautiful landscape paintings on the wall by family friend, a pretty good realist painter and an actor, other ones by a cartoonist, a family friend also who’d we visit sometimes – they had turtles, which I loved.
On my first day in the new school, I got called by some names by the older kids. My aunt had a stuffed animal, a pig named precisely one that they had called me, and they would keep using it. But they would soon be out of the school. We had a great class and I made a few close friends from that school. I was quiet kid who would like to draw and the kind that would whisper answers to the guy next to me. I didn’t do too great in school. I didn’t do much of my homework. When there was a note sent home I would forge my mom’s signature and return it without her knowing. My mother was always telling us how our big brother would ask her to question him for exams and how he got seven laudaturs in his baccalaureate. I was only good at art and did ok in English, biology and geography. I did not do well in math or Finnish. Then there was the gym class which I didn’t care for much. When there would be skiing I would have lousy old skis while others had new speed lock ones. There was underlining moment while we had ice hockey; one of my skates broke under me when we were standing in line, waiting to be divided into teams. I just would not get excited about any of it. My mom did sign us up for a Judo course once and I did enjoy that while it lasted and little bit of downhill skiing later.
We would visit my father and grandparents and while there we would go fishing. We went Ice fishing, trolling for pike and perch or seine hauling, catching vendace with the occasional trout. One time trolling we had caught almost a tubful of pikes. We had stopped as we were complaining as we were tired from all the cranking. My younger brother claimed himself the better fisherman as he caught a 10kg pike and I had only gotten 9.5. My grandfather worked as a fire chief, I hear he owned a bookstore before. My grandmother was evacuated twice during the wars. She made the best macaroni casserole and baked beautiful cakes for birthdays. My other grandparents and the whole family from mother’s side were Pentecostal Christians. Story goes that in war a grenade was thrown in the trench. One guy would jump on the grenade to save the rest, grandfather caught grenade shrapnel in his head. He was operated on a truck bed by a Jewish doctor, who saved his life and in the process removed three spoonfuls of my grandfather’s brain. Whenever we would visit, He would say “eat so you can carry on” and my grandmother would ask if we still believed in Jesus. “Yes”, we all lied in chorus. They had meetings on their yard in this big white tent. Sometimes she would give us money to be put in the collection box. One of my mom’s sisters lived with them; she had caught a dart in her eye when she was young and had a glass prosthetic. I liked to draw with her a lot.
We would be traveling a lot seems like almost every other year, but mostly rotating the Canary Islands. Loved it then of course, the sun and the pools and waterparks. It was that or we would take the ferry to Sweden where we would smash the arcades or poker machines. My big brother had brought us his Atari ST and big box of copied games. Some were originals in their boxes. Dungeon Master was my favorite of them all. We would all gather around and played in turn, lot of time was spend kicking the screamer mushrooms developing the ninja skills. We had also an 8 bit Nintendo which my younger brother was the master of. We would sometimes tease my dear sister by hiding her toys and stuff like that. She would often end up crying but we would always do our best to make her smile again. It seems we had a lot of stuff, but something that bothered me then was that had to wear recycled clothes from our cousins or friends of family. When we were very little me and my brother got pair of matching pink woolen sweaters left from our cousins - very progressive.
My mom would be married several times; I won’t go through them all. One marriage lasted four days till the guy sobered up and went crying back to his girlfriend. There is this one person she would remarry later; I liked him for he brought music into our house, He had a big record collection of heavy metal. I admired the art work on the albums like the ones of Iron Maiden and Manowar LP’s. Metallica was everyone’s favorite at the time. With him we got us a Ford Sierra Cosworth which was again apparently something special. One was stolen so we got another one later. My mom would go on trips with him touring the Europe. Meanwhile we would stay at the Pentecostals summer camp having a good time with our cousins, it wasn’t even that bad learning about the bible stuff either though kind of boring. Sometimes there were fun challenges where we would be given like a letter symbolizing our faith or something and we would go through different checkpoints where we could trade it for candy. We were good boys and girls and thought there would be a big reward in the end, while one group of our cousins had traded theirs for a box of licorice bars. In the end everyone got a 2 or 3 jellybeans and a pat on the head. We also stayed many years at summer home with this one family; they had three children, one of which had Down syndrome. One time I was playing badminton with the Down kid and the family’s car which was parked nearby rolled down into the lake. Neither of us had touched the car and I would say the handbrake wasn’t on. The mistress got really mad and while I was defending us, she started yelling and she said something about our alcoholic mother. I hated that woman a long time after that. But there were good times and I appreciate the place now, she also took us to the library and baked biscuits and offered hot chocolate with it. And we did some questionable stuff with their other son; trying to make explosive bullets for air rifle or dug a pond in the neighbors plot where we were to start growing lampreys and selling them.
I stopped going to the camps when I was about 13 and didn’t visit the family of my mother’s side so often. I went to see my grandfather in the hospital and see him withered away. He died of lung cancer. My grandmother lived a good while after but she would eventually suffer from dementia and she died around 90. I would like to be able to say it precisely but I can’t seem to remember these things.
We had a lot of good times in that neighborhood growing up. We used to barbecue in the backyard or paint with my mom, though she would most of the painting. She had applied to art school in her youth but wasn’t accepted in.
We run around woods of the suburb with the other kids from the neighborhood and collect butterflies or frog eggs. We would play games, like Hero quest in bicycle storage. Like I said before, we did cause quite a lot of havoc; one time we had broken through a wall to a storage house opposite of our backyard while looking for supplies to build a treehouse. The spot stood out because of the short planks covering what was an old toilet cleaning entrance. Guys would climb up the hole and found several rolls of sanding paper. We dragged a lot of it to our treehouse foundations, where they were left out in the open standing in rain. We weren’t exactly criminal masterminds. There weren’t a lot of happy parents in the neighborhood after the bill.
We had many pets over the years with unfortunate endings. Fish would end up dead due over feeding or they just didn’t like playdough, undulates had mysteriously escaped their coop, there was a dog we got from a shelter that ran away and got hit by a car and a chinchilla that broke its neck in a bouncing accident when some friends were over. I try to put it lightly but it gets to me.
My mom would often work late, and it would be my job to cook dinner for my siblings; I liked cooking and I got to snack while doing it. She would have hard time convincing us to keep the house tidy. There would be schedules drawn and plans made how the allowance would be distributed according chores and such but they usually didn’t work very long. Sometimes she would come very late with a taxi and she was too drunk and I would help her remove her boots help her to bed. I would bring her food next day. Sometimes she had arguments with one her boyfriends or husbands and the police would come. We had built a hiding place under the stairs where we had dragged some mattresses. I would begin to spend a lot of time at one of the neighbors who had a pc and I’d mostly watch him play games like Ultima Underworld or read his comic books. I had a small x-men collection of my own which I had borrowed to one of my other close friends, who ended up selling it later without my knowing for beer money I suppose.
My father had different jobs across Finland. Sometimes he would be in Lapland where he says it was sometimes easier to fly and meet us than when he lived a few towns away. I think he had trouble paying his alimony at the time and there would be foreclosures. There was also the issue of my mom’s practice that had gone over when they were together. I’m not all familiar with the details. But there may have been a lot of debt left from there and the probably expenses from the divorce court. My mom was always complaining about the money.
We kids spent a lot of times staying at some friends of my mom. By the time I was on my way to 7th grade we started staying longer and longer at this one family; it was single mom who had three kids of their own, we had quite a fun time there, but it felt a little weird staying away from home for so long. Their oldest kid was on his way from snowboarding kid onto a skinhead, and my brother would go to school wearing his city camo pants. We would watch lot of Van Damme movies there, and other pretty nasty stuff with real violence supposedly. Like a lot of kids I wore a bomber jacket at the time, I had not much clue about its associations. Later on one of drunken Fridays on the town a girl came accusing me of being a Nazi, and I was amazed. Looking back I guess I did look like one with my buzz haircut and the green jacket. I just thought it was like one of those cool guys in American action films. There were a couple of guys in our school with shaved heads who would draw celtic crosses on the ground with sticks and letters WP on the corners, they were kind of annoying loudmouths. Then there were rumors of the older guys from our suburb having massive group fights with the skins from another neighborhood. We would be watching the movie Blood in and blood out over and over and we would always associate ourselves with the Vatos Locos, though we were just regular white kids. Then came the movie American history X which left a quite a mark and then there was the TV series Oz which was one of the best series ever made.
One day the social service came and took as to a children’s home. It was like someone had betrayed us but it would be a few years of stability, sort of. Other troubled kids came and go, some ran away or were put into special observation units. There were four regular meals prepared by kitchen staff but it was like home cooking, only tastier. We would have to clean our room every week against all allowance and there was a grownup present 24 hours of week. We would go shopping for clothes and got to choose what we wanted. I had a couple of Pantera shirts, which was one of my favorite bands at the time. Besides Pantera I had cassettes from Metallica, Megadeth, The Offspring, Queen, Paradise Lost, E-rotic (Yes, it’s very embarrassing - I did not buy it for the music) and a Finnish punk band called Klamydia. There was money allocated for hobbies, which I would use on art supplies. After a while my brother and sister were placed in a foster family, I had gone with them but had gotten sick and stayed in bed for few days. They figured I was better staying at the home. So they called my father to come pick me off and drive me back. I still have lot of guilt leaving my siblings there. They were promised mopeds and horse riding classes and all kind of good stuff, which I didn’t care for. I preferred to live in the city and hang with my friends there.
My mom had bought me two tortoises that I was allowed to keep in the home. I got to stay with her on some weekends. On Friday nights we would go to town and try to get drunk. There was a guy who would buy beer for us against little change, and often times I hanged out with him on the bus station and play video poker whilst skipping school. He had some sort of accident happen to him and he was little bit different. I had gotten the nickname Arch-drunk from the guys I hanged out with during the school week in the computer class playing MUDs or Quake. A good indicator of that time in the middle school was my art grade. First two years I would get 9s and 10s but last year on my card there was a steady row: 6, 6, 6..
One night one kid that sometimes hanged in the neighborhood of the home came from behind and smashed a beer bottle against back of my head. I turned slowly and watched him giggling away with couple of older bullies from my school. I just stared at them thinking there wasn’t much to do. He asked to leave the bot from my cigarette and I gave it to him. He was obnoxious little brat year or two younger than me, maybe thirteen or fourteen. I would assume that he and those guys had it worse than me.
I was about 16 as I was able to move home on my decision. My mom had somewhat cleaned up her act and was back together with the Ford guy and they lived in center of the city. We’d end up having another tortoise and an iguana and build nice terrariums for them. With my grades I was able to get in to a high school that was 20 kilometers away from town, I met one my best friends there who I knew by looks from the Friday nights on town. He was a guitarist in a black metal band and introduced me into some great music like Nine Inch Nails. We’d dye our hair black and wore long black jackets. We would go to festivals and did a lot of goofy stuff together along with another friend. My siblings would visit and we’d get to be like a normal family again. My mom was trying her best to make up for what had happened. We got our first pc along with 33kbps modem. I met a girl in an online chat room and we started talking a lot on the phone as well. She was from another town and we’d get to see each other few times. The iguana I was very keen about died from dehydration; supposedly it was very common for the young ones in captivity. I felt It was my fault because I had put my attention elsewhere and took it pretty bad. She would laugh at me for crying over a lizard. We ended up selling the tortoises away some time after that. One time I visited her and I ended up staying with her parents for few months, which messed up my school pretty bad. Meanwhile we had moved again to another neighborhood. She did move up with us there and my mom had talked her into the high school where I went to. It worked out for a while. Some of the little skinheads from middle school had made an insulting comment to her and I heard about it later. One Friday night we were out drinking as this guy walks towards me with his arms raised. There was a rage in me I had not felt before. I knocked him out and kicked him on the ground. I was satisfied in the moment but the regret soon hit me. Then as I walked up the street I was met by some of his friends; 5 to 10 more skinhead asking if I had hit their friend, “yes” I admitted. Several punches and hits from a baton followed. I took the beating and I walked away. Next week I was called for the principal’s office to talk about the incident. I’m not sure if I was suspended or not but nothing more would come of that. After a while my girlfriend would go back to her parents and broke up with me for the final time over the phone. We had our issues and had short breakups before. I was very clingy and jealous and I had cut myself from the heart ache before, or so I convinced myself. There are some things that bring the shame out in you when you look at them closely. This time I was through with her also. In reality it took me a long time to get over her. She would visit me some times years later for a night or two. I did meet some women over the years but never developed real lasting relationships with anyone. I went back to school for a little while but was even more behind in my studies, which finally ended with a drunken embarrassment. Came senior prom day. I spent the day drinking in the AV booth, watching the other students dance; I had not participated in the training and didn’t have a partner. In the evening at the after party, there was a girl from school that I liked, I went to tell her that and right after I puked on her dress and passed out on the spot. In the future there would be scenes in South Park where I would have to away from the TV. I saw her next week on school and looked at her and it was too much to bear; I had ruined a special day in her life. This wasn’t the first or last of all the stupid mistakes that I would do while being drunk.
This was the neighborhood where the tattoo story happened. My stepfather had begun drinking quite a lot. One night he would have enough of raw spirits for him to end dead in the kitchen floor where was found in the morning. For a year or two me and my brother were doing nothing but playing video games. Well, I had tried a questionable business that my friend had persuaded me into which basically involved selling soap. You may know about it. I wanted to do something but I’m so happy I did not have it in me to succeed in that. Eventually mom got sick of it and sent us to the army as volunteers before the conscription time, it was that or get out of the house.
Before the service we spent a month with my father in a small town where he was working as the county’s business official. That was a pretty moist time; we were pretty much drunk the whole time. There were deliveries of imported spirits and cigarettes a phone call away along with jugs of local Sahti which is a strong unfiltered beer. Some years later my dad would eventually give up that job and moved to back to Middle-Finland as he would get tired of the foreclosures from his check. He found himself a wife and does what he likes best which is fishing.
I served the minimum of 6 months in the army. I had aspired for longer since it wasn’t that bad, I kind of enjoyed roaming in the woods playing war and firing all the guns. I suppose didn’t have the characteristics of a leader, or didn’t too well in the tests. When I told my roommates about wanting to do the program and asked them to write my name on the list, they thought I was joking. My brother ended up doing the whole year and becoming corporal. It did get me In shape for a while, I managed to do a few pull ups after the service, which was a first.
My mom had gotten us a new apartment while we were in the army. She was dating this older guy bit outside of town in the countryside. We would go there to help him with firewood and the yard. A new line was opening at the local vocational institute visual arts and communication. Having the words visual arts I jumped on it. While it wasn’t much about the art, it was more about graphic design, photography, video and multimedia. There was one course on which we would see some exhibitions and did some drawing. One was Teemu Mäki’s. I was struck by his work and read some of his essays concerning structural violence versus real violence. It opened some new ways to think about being an artist. Actually I had not been to many exhibitions at all before; I just figured art was mostly about drawing well. There were times during school I would be sucked in to a sort of depression, where I would just stay home playing Runescape or Unreal tournament.
I graduated there and tried to get in art school, but didn’t get invited to entry exams the first time. I was becoming more depressed. Idea of working in advertisement or similar field did not appeal to me. I had an apartment of my own but there was a point where I stayed in the empty business space next to my mother’s practice, where my brother would bring us food. There were times I wouldn’t go outside for weeks. I worked on some projects, studying random things like folklore or bleaching chicken bones – We had a lot of barbecued chicken. I thought of becoming a wrestler or tattoo red tears on my face and become a beggar to make a statement on the world. Luckily my mom had bought me an airbrush which would keep me busy for a while.
There wasn’t much going on, sometimes I would go out with my friends and sometimes we would get into fights. There was a punk girl I met at a nightclub and we ended up kissing. I think she got bored and she walked out and I would follow her out a bit later to have a smoke, to find she had been in an argument with a skinhead. The girl was being dragged into a police car and as they drove away, I went to question to the guy. His girlfriend was spitting on my face and it ended up with me fighting the guy. The fight didn’t last very long. I hit my head on the ground and passed out from the concussion. I had a long black hair then and I think someone had grabbed me from it. I would clip my hair short from that moment on. Funnily enough similar situation happened few years ago I was visiting my hometown, concussion and all. I am very mild natured when sober but when drunk guess you could say I was a thrill seeker. The collisions weren’t always unlucky ones as there would be some women I would get to spend the night with. But all of these were rare events, most of the time I would just drink as much as I could before the last call and end up going home via the grill and watch Matrix again with my friend and brother.
In those few years’ couple of things happened. I had convinced myself that I had ADHD or ADD to be specific and I would try to get diagnosed on that. I was crying from happiness as I finally had figured what was wrong with me. My mom would have none of that. We called my big brother who was to specialize as neurologist who said it was a children’s disorder. But I knew better and I insisted on having myself tested for it anyway. I went to some support group meetings and felt sort of comfortable with the other fidgeting people there. I had some evaluations with psychologists and did some tests there. They had given me prescription for some Effexor and I was ok living in a cloud of numbness for a while. They did test me and came to conclusion that I did not have ADHD, but I was talented. I was so disappointed, and questioned the tests done in a dimly lit room with no interfering sounds; of course I would do well on some puzzles and memory tests - I loved them.
I had bumped into Discordianism online and had not laughed so hard for a long time. It is something of a joke religion, but it matched the reality I was experiencing. I decided to stop taking the pills for depression and manage it on my own. I had finally divorced myself from the evangelic Lutheran church which had not served any purpose in my life, and bought my self a harmonica to fill the spiritual void. I haven’t actually learned to play it yet.
I would become interested on Zen and listened to some punk bands; Namely Leftöver Crack and Dropkick Murphy’s. There were a couple of books that hit the mark bringing some sort of union with the interests, Hardcore Zen and Dharmapunx later. I would sort of drift between subcultures, never fully pledging into anything but they would merge in me. At the time I was fascinated with SHARPs (skinheads against racial prejudice) and the original skinhead culture, as opposed to the racist “boneheads”, who were slowly beginning to fade from the street view though.
Somewhere around this time my mom had developed a lung cancer, which was first diagnosed as tuberculosis. She was operated and did the treatments. She beat it and continued working till 70. She would always say she would live to 92 at least. I did not let myself worry about her.
There were some courses by the employment office that I had to take. Final one was the art work shop for youth, where we would do all sort of artistic activity to help us get in touch with life. It was an awesome experience and it did encourage me pushing further on my way to becoming an artist. I went to an adult college for a yearlong art course that would help me prepare for art school. It was on a small town that had nothing much to do but art. There was one bar we would frequent, it had pool table and funnily enough a bunch of skinheads that would also patron it. Some looks were exchanged but there weren’t much of conflicts between us art college hippies and the skins in those days, though people talked of some incidents before.
Next year I got selected into Lahti Institute of Fine Arts where I got my bachelor’s degree. I will not go through about that time much here as it probably calls for a post of its own. I will say that it was a wonderful time and the people there were amazing individuals and the institute had the best parties. On one of the sculpture classes I made a mold of my Doc Marten’s and cast them in resin mixed with bronze powder and ended up throwing the boots away. My grandfather, the now retired fire chief was happy to see me doing art; he had begun painting himself in the old age. In the beginning of my career I won first prize in a national competition for young artists. Some of the reward money was spent on art supplies but majority went to other activities. Unfortunately my grandfather had died of cancer on the year before that. I really wished he would have been there to see it then.
We would rent an old cellar for studio with a group of guys and where we would form the art group Hydra. That has been my life since then; doing art solo and in group, having exhibitions and applying for grants.
Life since school has not been completely without drunken adventures here, but I mostly prefer to keep my head clear nowadays.
I don’t know how to end this. I am here. Thank you for reading if you made it through this heavy block of text.
Mindscape, oil on canvas, 2008