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In my linocut of cats in a tree I outlined earlier the shape of a rainbow in the sky. Now I started to fill the sky and add clouds with soft pastels, coming along quite dramatic.
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A black and white cat is dropping from a tree hopefully on her feet after trying to catch a bird in the tree. Or the cat is trying to jump to the tree after a bird, but this jump seems to be unsuccessful. Well, at least the bird stayed alive. The painting is by Almut Gernhardt (1940-1989) and Robert Gernhardt (1937-2006) and from their book "Was für ein Tag" / "What a Day". The colours in the picture are soft and beautiful and the expression of the cat is significant; "Oh Boy!"
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A new linocut for my frind Ulla's children's book, where Saana the girl is trying to find her mother. Also Saana's fried the teddy bear is participating in the search, but here he has been put in a cage as a prisoner. What happens now with the teddy bear? I just coloured the teddy yellow by hand in this linocut.
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The other one of the gallery Himmelblau's exhibitions is J.P. Köykkä's (s. 1987) "Pressure Escape". Two old factory halls are full of mainly large paintings, but there are also quite a many smaller sketches. The colours in the large acrylic paintings are delicious and beautiful. In addition to painting you can spot on the surfaces also oil paint, pastel, ink and spray paint. IN some of the paintings can also be spotted memories of Finnish National Romanticism, Gallen-Kallela's Kalevala themes, fighting grouses and Simberg's angels. The largest work fills almost the whole factory hall's wall with its red car.
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There are two interesting exhibitions at the gallery Himmelblau. One of them is Anniina Puiras' (b. 1989) "Humanimal Emotions". Two old factory halls are full of rather large paintings where you can also see chalk and pencil drawings, resin, ink and sometimes even loose protruding parts, flowers and wire. In one of the rooms the works remind me of the space, milky ways, stars and planets. The other room has more animal themes, dogs, wolfs, bears and birds. To see this exhibition rises quite mystic, spiritual and deep feelings if you go on slowly.
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Open for the last day (January 25, 2022) at Gallery Saskia Inka Hannula's and Teemu Raudaskoski's joint art exhibition. Happy and colourful paintings fit finelhy in Saskia's spacious rooms, and the hanging is beautiful and airy. These works have names, like Khan And Maharadza or One Animal Orchestra, but you can invent your own names. The imagination can really fly in this exhibition, and you can see any kind of shapes in these paintings from the outer space to flowers and bees. It must have been fun to make these paintings, and the pictures have some resonance to music and dance familiar to artists.
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My friend Ulla's story about Saana trying to find her mother has now advanced to a wind tunnel. In this linocut for illustration of the book the character called Muuan Muu is flying along the wind tunnel with Saana, the boy and teddy bear under her arms. There can be seen a hole at the end of the tunnel, and birds are screetching in the sky.
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A black cat is in front of a green door. We don't know if she wants to get inside through the door, or if she just got out of the door. Still, the cat can not open this door by herself, it's so very heavy. The door is made of wood, but there are large metal nails, a big knocker and keyhole. One of the green planks at the bottom has been replaced by an unpainted piece of wood. Perhaps the cat could earlier go through there. The photo was taken by winni.
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In my friend Ulla's story about Saana trying to find her mother Saana, the boy and teddy near have walked into an unknown village. The houses seem to fall over, and birds are screeching in the sky. In this linocut I just coloured the windows yellow. So, the houses are lived in, even though the village first felt deserted.
