A simple inhalation. So fleeting is the experience of artistic inspiration. By the time you exhale, it is already gone, and from that moment until the work is finally finished, you try to conjure it back.
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Inspiration is created by a colour phenomenon that triggers a response in you. It is followed by a chain reaction of ideas, which quite often leads to a melancholy emotion or a memory. Occasionally, the idea will come full circle and return to its original form, colour. Colour has much to say to me in its own language. This is why I use this mighty weapon with great care.
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I used to tell myself for a long time that my inhibited negative emotions function as the most significant propellant in my work. But I suppose that’s not entirely true. When you make pictures, you experience many feelings of happiness – a longing for beauty and the sentimentality of yearning. Dreaming, visions in the dark.
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I started to become introverted after my childhood, and perhaps I have remained that way. Making pictures (which I didn’t call art back then) was no longer a way to express myself. It was a way to make myself visible.
-Tuomo Laakso