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This watercolour painting "Cat Days / Kissanpäivät" by Kirsti Koro from Virrat just exudes homeliness. The colours are soft and warm as are the markings of a paint brush. A cat is sitting by a fruit bowl and there is a potted pland and window in the background. That´s it, a fleeting moment in the life of a cat!
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Over the years quite a many linocuts have accumulated as Christmas cards. In this year´s card there are four elves with a black cat. I put to my Etsy shop three different five card collections of Christmas cards printed from my linocuts, five cards for ten euros including post and packaging. There seems to be a cat or cats in many of my Christmas cards - in my mind the perfect Christmas animal, soft and warm.
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The Christmas card is coloured. The elf costumes are green and hats are red. The size of this linocut is 15 x 15 cm, and the printed, folded card is approximately the same size.
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Well, Christmas is already around the corner! So I ´m starting to make a linocut for a Christmas card. There will be in this card a cat and several a bit playful elves. The linocut will be hand coloured: red and green.
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The first mixed media work using new linocuts: the sun and butterflies that I coloured by hand. The sky was made with soft Pan pastels and its now blue like a memory or dream of the summer. At the bottom there is a linocut of the cat Viiru on a tree branch. This picture is one of my smaller series of lino&pastel works, 50 x 30 cm. I found the name for this picture from Juice Leskinen´s song Norwegian Pullover: " On a Bright Morning In a Chattering Company Practicing Enjoyment".
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Well, there popped up a quite light blue summer sky behind Viiru the cat, sun and butterflies.But there is lurking a dark cloud on the horizon. The sky was made with soft Pan pastels and Viiru, sun and butterflies are linocuts.
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I´m starting a new pastel sky with linocuts: Viiru the cat, new butterflies and the sun. In this picture the linos are the carved side up ie. actually wrong side up, because they will be printed by pressing the linos on the paper. But perhaps you get maybe better picture of what you imagine the final picture to be.
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It was fun to make this linocut of the sun, but I just wonder how it looks printed. It is quite decorative, flames and stars. The size of the sun is 15 x 15 cm. With a yellow background it reminds me of Ukraine & peace.
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I have printed quite a lot of moons, but now I think I make a sun. The carving of the linocut is in its beginning. In the middle of the sun there a like flames.
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Towards new skies! I made also a night butterfly, moth, small linocut or stamps. I coloured the lower wings of this moth bright red. The size of the lino is 7 x 11 cm. At the same time I carved also a small flying bird, linocut, I might leave this black and white, 10 x 10 cm.
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I have couple of cards of Tony Mendoza´s black and white cat photo series called "Ernie". In this photo Ernie is probably sitting on a roof with skyscrapers in the background. But you can imagine, that Ernie has climbed high and is posing like a gargoyle of an old church. There is a small half moon in the sky, and everything else is black except the light in the windows. What a brave cat is Ernie!
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A bit bigger linocut of a butterfly, swing span 10 cm, could be multicoloured if needed. Here I tested the butterfly with purple hues.
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I made small linocuts, almost like stamps of small butterflies. This is the smallest one. I´m planning to use these at least on larger pictures where there is sky. I can colour these butterflies, and maybe they look best as yellow or blue. The wing span of one butterfly is about 6 cm.
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There are now several different versions of Coloured Cat Forest linocuts. It´s really hard to decide one of them for framing and an exhibition - lighter or brighter colour? That´s a question. I snapped short videos making this quite large linocut, 40 x 60 cm. The picture is actually a combination of four A 4 -sized separate linocut, which are taped together before spreading the ink. Spreading the ink with a roller is a really important operation. There have to be enough of ink, so that even the darker areas will print solid and not patchy. Still, there must not be too much ink, so that the smaller lines will clog. I use water soluble lino ink and hard roller.
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I made three coloured version of the Cat Forest. Before pulling the linocuts, I printed colour and plant leaves / monoprint on pieces of paper on which I then pulled for cats in a tree all together. One og these is quite colourful and two are lighter. Now I can´t decide, which one of them would be best ti frame for an exhibition. The size of the picture is quite large: 40 x 60 cm.
Saksalaisen Almut Gernhardtin (1940-1989) maalauksessa mustavalkoinen kissa istuu jäällä. Kissan kuvajainen heijastuu jäälle, ja sitä kissa varmaan katselee yllättävän rauhallisesti. Jää taitaa juuri olla pettämässä kissan alta ympärillä leviävien pyöreiden renkaiden perusteella. Kuva huokuu silti tyyneyttä, puut rannalla ovat pehmeän vihreät. Mutta näkymä voi muuttua sekunneissa.
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A black and white cat is sitting on the ice in this painting by German Almut Gernhardt (1940-1989). The image of the cat is reflected on the ice, and the cat is probably looking at it surprisingly quietly. The ice might be breaking under the cat at any time based on the round rings spreading around the cat. Still, the picture exudes calmness, trees on the shore are soft green. But the scenery can change in a few seconds.
Tämä oli hauska taideretki Tampereella, yhdellä bussipysäkin välillä kolme galleriaa: Nykyaika, Koppelo ja Saskia - upea kotikaupunki! Näyttelyn on kuratoinut Veikko Halmetoja.
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Kirsti Tuokko´s art exhibition just opened at Gallery Saskia, oil paintings on plexiglass. The paintings are portraits, half of them self portraits. Some of the works are huge, there is space on the wall only for only one or two paintings. The persons in these paintings avoid eye contact and they have something weird in their mouth, eyes and nose, the impression is fearful or defiant. They are all women. The colours are fine, backgrounds or large colour surfaces actually are glowing on plexiglass. The technique is really mastered! The exhibition was curated by Veikko Halmetoja.
This was a fun art trip in Tampere, with one bus stop in between and tree galleries: Nykyaika, Koppelo and Saskia - what a great home town!
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Gallery Koppelo is full of paintings by Inka Hannula and Laura Laurila, and you can also watch videos about their dances. Dance has inspired and enthused their paintings and acted as an interactive creation process for the paintings by both of them. Even the name of this exxhibition is "Dance Over Moss". Paintings are still not group paintings, each of them has quite her own style. Inka Hannula´s works exude colour, shapes and patterns, in a small room upstairs even animal figures. Laura Laurila´s painting resemble more landscapes and they have got their features from the nature.
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I still managed to visit in time the 40th Anniversary exhibition of Photographic Centre and Gallery Nykyaika, put together or curated by Petri Nuutinen and Marja Pirilä. The idea of the exhibition: ten participating photographers have each selected two of their own photos, one from the beginning of their career and one of nowadays. The development of many of them has been tremendous. So I was more interested in the photos of today or with Marja Pirilä actually her installation. She had build many Camera Obscura lenses inside a huge cloth cupboard, and you could see through them the opposite street. Petri Nuutinen´s polygonal photos made on metallic boards are wild, like a staircase from Cuba. Veli Garnö´s photo of his son at the grave of Eugen Schauman is touching, and Riitta Päiväläinen´s landscape is enchanting. What an interesting exhibition!
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Two tasks in one visit! At the same trip that we visited Syysloma exhibition at the IIttala school building, we took two rather big linocuts for Naïve Artists in Iittala art loan service. Before long they will be also in the web service of the art loan service. But before that they can be seen at the lobby shop as also a couple of calendars for 2023 of linocuts and cards. The lobby shop is open at the same time that Syysloma exhibition is open.
