Jokiaho

* I was born in 1965 in a place called Saarijärvi in the middle of Finland. Currently I live in a city called Tampere working as an artist and a museum worker.

* I began to paint when I was about twenty after a one crucial trip to different European art museums. After that experiment my interest for painting grew.

* After my graduation in 1992 from the cultural studies and arts at the University of Joensuu I started to paint regularly. As an artist I consider myself as a D.I.Y artist and a self-teaching painter, because art is never ending process for me.

* My early paintings were influenced by the expressionism and my personal life situations and realities. Those days I searched clarity, purity and straightforwardness of expression. I used to paint by using paints squeezed straight out from the tubes instead of mixing the colours while painting. I was aiming my inspirations and feelings on canvas straight and raw. I used to paint like a bird sings, spontaneously and free.

* After that followed the strict period of abstract paintings. My goal at that period was to make paintings that have the strongest effect without any hard efforts. The subjects of paintings were actually faded out as much as possible. The main question for me at that time was what are the limits of painting so that it still can be called a painting. The idea was a kind of deconstruction of formal conventions of the idea of painting.

* Eventually I found Sumi-e style of painting in December 2006. As an art form, Sumi-e gave me all the elements I needed for creating: Purity, intensity, chaos, power, perfection, discipline and beauty. Nowadays I am painting again with figurative motifs and subjects but the attitude toward painting has not change a bit from the beginning.

* My paintings and Sumi-e works today are based on the simple fact that I try to tell and concentrate on the essential. No matter if the subject is about “human condition” or “naturescape.” I am still inspired by the art of eastern Zen style paintings and traditional modern western modernist art. For me the main things of“zen philosophy” can be see mainly as source material for my own style. Sometimes the influence is barely evident and other times quite literal.

Art as communication is basic to Western aesthetics, as is the relationship between form and content. Art has developed a complex linguistic symbolism through which the artworld manipulates this “material” to communicate with audience.

For me, personally, to paint is like to breath; natural, effortless and free. For me all the great art today express something quite different from what words can express. When the paintig flows, the painter and the painted are the same.

My paintings are total worlds of their own, nothing more or less and very true in their own universe. In that universe my mental images transforms into graphic form.

Date of attribution: 2006-06-13 Website : taide/ismo.jokiaho
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Date of Attribution : 2005-09-08
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Website : taide/ismo.jokiaho
Comment :
Website passed all requirement for Silver Award.