Category: Blog

This is the story of how a vision for a painting can turn into an art disaster – and then into something completely different again. Spoiler: it features an upside-down canvas, seagulls flying the wrong way and a laughing artist who didn’t let a little chaos get in the way of creativity.

For a long time I’ve been searching for one particular colour combination that pleases my eye. The base colours of this painting were built on those combinations (though still not quite the colour I’m after). The aim was to find an orange pastel shade for the background. At this stage the painting has a lovely blue sea and an orange sky. The islands on the horizon overlap each other nicely. The sea was still waiting for the reflections of the sun.

The painting had been drying for a few weeks. The creative buzz carried on. I hadn’t painted for a while, so I felt I simply had to continue and get my inner urge to create going again. The painting was drying in a corner upstairs at the cottage. It was wonderful to pick up a brush again and start taking the picture further.

I grabbed the painting from the corner with the idea of bringing the sky to life. Bringing the sky to life – naturally you think birds belong in a blue sky… Well, in this case the sky was actually the orange pastel one, and I had the whole painting upside down!

In my excitement I had painted the birds without looking at or thinking about the painting as a whole. When I got up from my chair and stepped back from the painting, I realised my mistake. The whole background was upside down. There’s really nothing you can do but laugh at your own over-eagerness. In a previous life, a failure like this might have sent the painting into the fireplace. Luckily, these days I approach things without negative energy. The seagulls turned out nicely, but the islands on the horizon had taken on rather peculiar shapes. No worries!

I started painting the sea out of the orange former sky… It looked like it was working, apart from the inverted islands on the horizon. There was plenty of paint on the palette, inspiration was bubbling and I still had energy to create. After looking at the painting for a while, I realised I could turn it into something that depicts a view from the sky.

The result? Maybe it wasn’t what I was originally after. But it was something better: a reminder that creativity doesn’t always follow a straight line – sometimes it flies along with upside-down seagulls.

Many people are surely familiar with the golden hour around sunset. All the colours become, in a way, deeper and more orange. The name golden hour describes that moment well. The golden hour often inspires the colours of my paintings – as it did in this moment, with swans swimming in the reflection of the setting sun. This oil painting was made in September 2024.

The surface of the sea catches the reflection of the sun from the opposite shore, where the trees tint the water orange. A wonderful moment in the evening sun.

This painting is especially dear to me. It was made in summer 2023, soon after I rediscovered the joy of painting – the lightness that comes when you let the brush move without demands or expectations.

“Moments in Time” doesn’t depict anything concrete, and that is exactly where its magic lies. Every brushstroke was made with an empty mind, fully present in the moment. That was when I found a simple but powerful way to calm my thoughts, and it freed me from my inner critic – that demanding voice that always wanted more, better, more perfect.

When that voice fell silent, joy took its place. Freedom. Trust that art can come into being in its own time. This technique has stayed with me ever since and given my inner artist room to breathe.

What makes this oil painting special is that it doesn’t try to depict anything – yet it can still say a lot. When you stop in front of it, you might notice that you see in it exactly what you need. Perhaps peace, perhaps colours, perhaps something you didn’t know you were looking for.

Emptying the mind as a technique is ultimately very simple – and at the same time endlessly relaxing. It’s like a little breather in the middle of everyday life, and that is exactly where this work came from.

A tip for the anxious artist

Here’s a tip for every artist who finds painting stressful: find a quiet, peaceful place. Take your familiar painting or drawing tools. The medium doesn’t matter – I use oil paints myself. The canvas doesn’t matter either; it can even be an old work that for one reason or another didn’t work or was never good enough for you.

The painting process is very simple, because it focuses more on your state of mind than on the painting itself. Your inner censor, your critic and your thoughts step aside as your breathing leads you into deep calm. Emptying the mind happens through the breath.

Put a dab of paint on your brush. Look at the spot where you’re going to apply it. Breathe out calmly – all the air out of your lungs. Your diaphragm can still push your lungs up a little more. When all the air is out, wait until your body starts signalling that it needs oxygen. If something is still “buzzing” in your mind, wait a little longer.

Just before you breathe in, open your eyes, let the brush fly across the canvas and see what happens. The brush moves before your thoughts and inner censor can catch up. The painting doesn’t depict anything – and that’s exactly why it can’t possibly fail.

What’s also fascinating about the painting above is how much paint I used. I often look at it and wonder whether I should try making something similar now.

How I set myself free…

Here are a few examples of how I broke free from the chains of self-censorship. The one below was a painting of the islands of the Airisto. I had already learned a little painting technique, but even so, my inner censor wasn’t happy with the landscape. This canvas has probably been reused at least three times. A bit like in music, I started remixing my own paintings. In a remix, something old is recycled in a new way.

Here is a smaller painting that turned into a sea monster in the remix – or however each viewer sees it.

Back when I made these paintings, I had no idea about colours, colour theory, what pleases the eye and so on. That understanding came later through experience. This “businessman grasps the beauty of the moment” was a painting through which I wanted to depict my own feelings. As you can see, the use of colour was still wild, and the painting includes my own gravestone, which instead of rest in peace reads L.I.P – Live in peace. At the time of this painting, my head wasn’t buzzing with worries or with imaginings about the future or the past.

My current paintings still follow that same path. I try to find my inspiration in the place where there are no thoughts. “Thinking outside the box” only works once you switch off your thoughts and close the whole “box”. By switching off your thoughts you reach a state where there is no box at all.