Men Talk about Their Feeligs 2008-2010
"Men Talk about Their Feelings" was at first just a joke. I did one painting with two male opposing each other with comic-style word bubbles over their heads. I did not like the painting at all. Somehow, two years later I was holding my first book containing 45 similar pictures.... Here is the short, or long, story what happened, as it is printed in the book. And under there somewhere couple of pictures of the works themselves. And for the record, I love these paintings nowadays, even the first one.
Men Talk - A Short History
My series of paintings titled "Men Talk About Their Feelings" developed into book form largely by accident. In January 2008, I had completed the seven-part series of paintings "Phenomena" that was to be exhibited at the Pori Art Museum. I had practically unlimited wall space at my disposal in Pori, so my largest work was three meters in width and two meters in height with the rest reaching almost similar proportions. After finishing the series for Pori, I was set for some quick movements: my invitation to the summer exhibition at the Salmela art centre in Mäntyharju required a set of completely new works. The old basement of the Chemist's House that was given to my use there was more or less a complete opposite of the Pori exhibition space. The venue had a great atmosphere, but its rooms were low and had few intact walls. Except for a couple of larger paintings, the walls could fit only works that were one meter or less in width.
Biting my nails, and under increasing panic I started browsing through piles of sketches archived in a closet in my studio. "How does one make small paintings?!?". "Insane, impossible at the very least!". Among the sketches I found an oblong drawing of two heads facing each other. There was a speech balloon above one head, while the other had a tree growing off its top. I began drawing on canvas on the basis of this sketch, but for some reason I excluded the tree on top of one head giving both a speech balloon, one with a strange landscape and one with colourful stripes. I was excited during the process, but for some reason the finished word appeared atrocious to me. The blackness of the background seemed grim and the heads of the geezers bloody ugly. I was heavily disappointed and decided to discard the whole project. After working with other things for some weeks, I stumbled across the original sketch. I started to rethink the picture with a more peaceful mood. I made more detailed drawings of male characters on colourfully primed or completely white canvases. After a few experiments I was convinced that this was nothing short of the greatest invention in the history of art.
For me, communication served as the primary starting point of these paintings. I was thus not planning on tackling men's issues; the characters I used just were men, characters that were easy for me to treat and to identify with. As the series progressed and its name established itself, the title took the driving seat. Dialogues and situations between men began to accumulate like bonus points at the local supermarket. I wanted yet to keep the spoken content as open as possible. Sometimes it is useful to make a clear and considered point, in this case, however, I regard my interpretation of the content just as mighty as anyone else's.
After Salmela, the "Men Talk..." works were next presented in my Gallery Uusitalo solo exhibition in Helsinki in the spring of 2009. In addition, the exhibition included some works that had bananas as their subject (yes, bananas...). My gallerist Marjukka Uusitalo, who is known for her creativity and sharp vision, spotted by accident a company named Arktinen Banaani ("Arctic Banana") during my exhibition. Like a good gallerist should, she invited the Banana people to take a look at my bananas. The Arctic ones turned out to work in the field of cartoon publishing, and they became interested in an artist whose approach to art has contact points with the world of cartoons. I had already pondered the possibility to turn the "Men Talk..." series into book form, but even considering my rather sluggish nature, in retrospect it took me embarrassingly long to connect the dots and to offer my series to the Bananas.
When I agreed with the Arktinen Banaani publishers to produce the book in the spring of 2009, there were 23 finished works in the series. During the autumn and early 2010 I made 22 more pieces. In the book the text you are reading now is located at this halfway mark. As the works were placed in almost a chronological order, I found it interesting to see how ideas have developed in the course of the series, and how the first half differs from the second one. In an unforeseeable future, I will paint a few more works to the series, since the whole should consist of 50 works according to my own peculiar decision. But there will not be a sequel to this book. And if there were, its foreword would have to explain why I backtracked from my earlier unshakeable stand... Oh well, now it is time to finish this off and say thank you and goodbye, until next time.
With best regards,
Tuomo
