Proximity

Proximity /prɒkˈsɪmɪti/
noun

nearness in space, time, or relationship.

“Proximity” by Tiina Lilja (2020) embroidery and oil paint on board

I’ve had some great news last Thursday: I’m finally going to be off furlough and back to work as a studio painter.  It has been a privilege to dedicate this much time for making my own art, but to be completely honest, I am really keen on returning to a form of normal in September.

Unlike my husband who has been working from home throughout and following lockdown, I have needed to set my own challenges during the Covid-19 crisis.  I would definitely say I was in a bit of a creative slump before the pandemic and the only way to move forward towards the new normal was to change the way I make art.  Focussing only on the positives, the last several months have made me more confident in exploring new ways of making visual art as well as tackling more overtly personal subject matter than ever before.  The first of these experiments, begun in early spring and finished in late July, is Proximity: a piece about my father who I haven’t been able to see since last summer.

proximity detail

“1986” and “Proximity” by Tiina Lilja

Proximity is a mixed media piece, slightly larger than an A4 sheet of paper, combining two oil painted miniatures sitting within an embroidered frame.  The portraits, one featuring a young boy around the age of 7 and the other of a slightly younger girl with her head cropped out, are those of my father and me.  In the photographs my painted portraits are based on, we are wearing the same pair of tasselled leather trousers, although by the time I had the honour of doing so, nearly 25 years ago now, they had been cut into shorts.

proximity detail

proximity detail

proximity detail

The reason Proximity took so long to finish was largely due to my indecisiveness.  Having finished the embroidered cover, largely using cotton thread and acrylic yarn, I simply could not choose what I wanted to paint.  Overtly Covid-centred subjects would have felt false – I am not that type of an artist and everything else seemed too mundane.  I left Finland over ten years ago now, but I have never felt this far away from home before.  Of all the things I have missed during lockdown: family, friends and my home in France… it was my dad Juha who I missed the most.  He’s a typical Finnish bloke, not the type to video chat or hang around social media and I have really cherished our long phone calls during this difficult time.

For better or for worse, Proximity is my main lockdown piece.  I have already improved on some of the ideas I first explored with this piece; others I have completely abandoned for now, but it shall always have a special place among my artworks.  I turned thirty just a week ago and the most important thing I am trying to implement, having reached this milestone, is to spend less energy on worrying about what other people think of me.  I lost quite a few followers off my Instagram when I started posting images of these types of mixed media- and textile pieces, but I’ve gained new ones since.  Life is too short to obsess over social media, and not worth living if you are just going to regret every risk and change of direction.

So: take risks, create and don’t lose sight of the things that matter the most – that’s the new normal public service announcement from me to you.

Tiina x

This is probably the most famous picture in the world.

It’s been a weird few weeks so I hope you forgive me for not being desperately active on the blog lately.  But I have been busy in the studio, trying to finish up my furlough paintings and working on some new embroideries.  Even so, finding the motivation to make art has been a struggle.  I surprised myself, really, when I positively leapt on a chance to take part in the Door to Door project organised by Art Aviso.

Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” from Newnes’ Pictorial Knowledge 1950’s Encyclopedia (Edited by Enid Blyton), the base of my Door to Door submission.

“This is probably the most famous picture in the world” by Tiina Lilja for Art Aviso Door to Door – Art in time of Covid-19 project. Mixed media on paper, (2020)

The concept is simple: Each participating artist will be supplied with a page from Newnes’ Pictorial Knowledge 1950’s Encyclopaedia selected at random, which will form a basis of an artwork to be exhibited at Lite HAUS Galerie, Berlin in September 2021 as well as joining the active, evolving Art Aviso Door to Door virtual exhibition.  There’s still time to join in – Art Avisos Door to Door – Art in time of Covid-19 project is open to their subscribers based in UK and Europe.

I just finished submitting my artwork “This is probably the most famous picture in the world” , so how about a little “behind the scenes” tour?

Door to Door project by Tiina Lilja – work in progress. Here I have finished off my Mona Lisa photo transfers in two versions. In the end only two made it on the finished artwork.

The different versions for my “Door to Door” photo transfers. In the end I went with the low-contrast one, ironed on patterned cotton.

Door to Door contribution by Tiina Lilja – work in progress

Here’s how I wrote about my contribution:

If imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery, Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is the finest portrait ever painted.  Arguably the most famous picture in the world, she has earned her place among the most copied images too, through countless reproductions in books and in print, all the way to keyrings and tea-towels emblazoned with that mysterious smile.

Her entry in the Newnes’ Pictorial Encyclopaedia can be found in Volume 7, under Great painters of all Nations- How they lived and what they achieved, on page 13.  She is iconic – and utterly untouchable.  My work is very much concerned with icons and idols, but the only way I felt I could approach the Mona Lisa, was through her numerous copies, from the tastefully informative such as the black and white illustration on my allocated leaf, to the utterly absurd.  A naughty Mona Lisa Halloween costume comes to mind as a good example of the latter sort.

With this in mind, I set out to embroider and draw around a set of photo transfers featuring digitally altered snippets of the page I was allocated.  Beyond scaling everything to fit a sheet of A4 paper, I made no sketch or a plan for the piece as I wanted it to assume its shape organically.  Like in a game of Chinese whispers, the end result is both reminiscent of its origin and removed from it.  A nuanced smile.

As said, I was well chuffed about the project briefing: maybe my page was going to be an awesome medical illustration or an obsolete graph of some sort.  What dropped in my inbox, however, was a black and white rendition of the most famous portrait ever painted: the Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci.  I was not disappointed by any means; just a little lost at first.  The Mona Lisa is not just one of the most recognisable images in the world, but also amongst the most copied.  Any retelling of this image would immediately be compared not just to the page from Newnes’ Encyclopaedia, but to the thousands of other renditions of Da Vinci’s masterpiece.

Door to Door contribution by Tiina Lilja – work in progress

Art Avisos Door to Door project, work in progress

Faced with this dilemma, I decided to focus on the idea of reproduction through repetition rather than simply re-imagining this renaissance icon in 2020.  Two snippets from my allocated page, digitally altered and cropped, became the core of my piece in form of photo transfers, ironed on patterned scraps of cotton.  The rest was left to form freely around a sheet of A4 paper set out as the base for my work.  As said previously, the process best resembled a game of Chinese whispers with an excitingly unpredictable end.

Door to Door contribution by Tiina Lilja – work in progress – with a sliver of that Mona Lisa smile

Sizing up my embroidered elements against a sheet of A4 card.

Door to Door contribution by Tiina Lilja – work in progress

Material wise, I thought it was important to stick with things I had in my studio at the time.  Although I did have to purchase a can of mount spray, I was pleased how the colour scheme of the piece was influenced by other projects I am currently working on, rather than being pre-determined through deliberate design.  I am a slave to habit and breaking out of my usual comfort zone of meticulous planning has truly been my favourite aspect of participating in this project.

If any of this floats your boat at all, pop over to the Door to Door exhibition page to see how other artists have re-interpreted their encyclopaedia pages.

 

Summer 2020

I can’t believe it’s almost Midsummer!  This has not really been the season by the sea I was hoping for, but at least I am lucky to be spending it safe and sound with my husband and the dog, who absolutely loves having both of his parents home with him.  In other news, my furlough continues, and with it, the exploration of different ways of making art:  this cheerful little embroidery below will make up most of my next artwork aiming to combine embroidered and painted motifs.

Embroidery in progress – the beginning

Ryijy silmuja – Finnish carpet stitch

The intersection of contemporary art and traditional crafts has intrigued me for some time now: most of my life in fact, if you count in the masterpieces I was creating before I could lace up my boots properly.  In fact, one of my earliest art-making memories is about my grandmother and her sewing cards.  These colouring-meets-sewing kits tend to be a bit of a Nordic thing, but basically they are these sturdy printed cards with pre-punched holes for kids to “embroider”.  The concept is pretty straightforward: first you stitched around the outline of your colouring picture with a plastic needle, using any of the multi-coloured threads from the kit or a piece of left over yarn.  Then you were to expertly colour in the image and presented the magnum opus to your Nan, who would immediately call you a very clever little thing and perhaps reward you with a bowl of wild strawberries liberally sprinkled with talkkuna.

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Samaan aikaan toisaalla #6vuotias #ompelukuva #muumi

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I adored my Nan and I adored her sewing cards.  She spared no expense nor effort in getting me the Moomins kit, tons of nature & farming ones as well as the coveted Disney Pocahontas collection.  Eventually, I had sewn through the whole range available from the mobile shop that visited her secluded farm twice a week, so we started making our own.  This was frankly much more interesting.  Forget about the dull plastic needles for silly little children – the thick utilitarian card we used required a long, sharp adult one from my Nan’s sewing kit she kept in the drawer of her pedal Singer.  I only ever stuck myself once.  Embellishing my sewing-card self-portrait with my freshly-drawn blood remains the most avant-garde event of my art career to date.

“Cherubs 2” by Tiina Lilja (2011) mixed media on canvas (20x20cm)

“So Far” by Tiina Lilja (2010) mixed media (90x70cm)

“1991” by Tiina Lilja (2015) oil paint on damask (21x29cm)

My current piece is by no means the only time I have attempted to create combining visual art and embroidery.  During my student years in Edinburgh College of Art, some years earlier, I returned to the subject of embroidery and painting time and time again, frankly, with mixed success.  At that time, I felt a keen pressure to perform as a painter rather than pursuing any mixed media interests and it took me some time to return to carry out these experiments.  Although inspired by a very different strain of research material, my Double Exposure project, begun in late 2018, borrows heavily on the work I did with my Nan’s sewing cards back in the early 90’s.  Two of those pieces are currently on view at Envision Arts’ online exhibition Threaded II.

Double Exposure by Tiina Lilja (2019) mixed media on paper

Double Exposure by Tiina Lilja research project looking into the depiction of vulnerable women and girls in visual art.

It is fascinating how I return to this subject matter time and time again, especially when I feel my college-aged experiments were not particularly promising.  In a way it is like an itch I need to scratch.  Now is as good of a time as any – the world has gone mad and I suddenly feel less self-conscious about my work than I have ever been.

Summer embroidery in progress: a mix of stitches and colours

Summer embroidery in progress: a mix of stitches and colours

Summer 2020 embroidery, in acrylic yarn and cotton thread on polyester mesh. My main stitch here is the Finnish carpet stitch or ryijysilmu.

All those years ago, each time I finished a sewing card, my Nan would pin in on the wall, adding it to a growing collection of drawings by her grandchildren at the back of her cottage, right above her radio and next a selection of framed family photos.  There was some rotation, but her favourites would remain for years, long after I stopped embroidering, probably long after I grew up and stopped visiting too.  All that yellowed card and faded thread – as far as I can remember they were the only art she ever owned.  Well, besides from those naff tea-towels printed to double up as calendars.

She died of advanced dementia nearly ten years now, my Toini-Mummu, and this one is for her.

Threaded II

I have been so busy with a project that I almost forgot some of my Double Exposure pieces are currently on show at Envision Arts online exhibition Threaded II!  This is a multimedia exhibition, curated around the idea of fibres, and all work submitted needed to consists of 25% fibres of any form.

The two pieces accepted for the show combine found imagery, drawing and embroidered motifs, with an aim to highlight how our knowledge on the personal life of an author affects the way their work is viewed.  I was compelled to create this body of work upon receiving a book of photographs called “Souvenirs” by David Hamilton.  Like a window that gets dirtier and harder to peer through with the passage of time, it is difficult to observe Hamilton’s photography in earnest without the cloud of child abuse accusations obstructing the view.  Following this line of reasoning, I began to draw with a view of obscuring, but not entirely covering the pages of Souvenirs – to physically replicate this effect on paper.  The embroidered inserts, executed using cotton and wool, are an extension of this process.

You can read more about the project and its evolution at my previous blog posts Double Exposure and Double Exposure – Drawing New Narratives.

Tooting my own horn aside, I was blown away by the quality of the pieces on display.  My personal favourite being two tapestries by Jordan Holms, who was rightfully awarded an honourable mention for their contribution.

But why am I rabbiting on about it, you can view the whole exhibition at Envision Arts in June 2020.

Enjoy the show.

1997 – on Seductiveness of Nostalgia

My family, coloured pencil on paper, 1994

NHL-cards and Extreme Ghostbusters… that pretty much sums up the year 1997 for me.

Although Nokia was already in the process of forging their mobile-millions in 1997, Finland was far from being the tech-savvy start-up capital of the world it is known as today.  In fact, most people were barely back on their feet following the early 1990’s depression and the subsequent collapse of the Finnish economy.  Between 1992 and 1997 unemployment had hovered between 12-17%, but things were looking up.  Not insignificantly, our boys took home gold at the 1995 Ice Hockey World Championship Games, hoisting the nation’s collective self-esteem to an all-time high.  On a more personal level, I started school a few days short of my seventh birthday in August of 1997, rocking a blond mullet and clothes sewn by my mother, with dreams of being an artist one day.  We were a few years short of moving out of the council flat I was born in, shopping was paid in Finnmarks, calls made on GSM and you needed to wait two weeks for your selfies to be developed and delivered to your door.

Time works in strange ways during those early years of your lives.  Indian summers and white Christmases; the full Monty.  Most people remember but an idealised version of their formative years.  I certainly wasn’t aware of the archaic economic and socio-political structures unravelling around me.  For a child such as myself growing up in a sleepy regional town in the South West of Finland, the winds of change blowing through my small nation were easily drowned out by the gentle sway of its ancient forests.  Kids are like that I suppose, adaptable.  My dad was home a lot when I was small and I loved it.  It took me years to figure out he’d been on furlough or had lost yet again another job alongside tens of thousands of young men like him.  The average unemployment figure might have been around 15% in 1994, but for builders like my dad, it was over 36%.

So much for the good old days.

Why is it then that we turn to nostalgia when times are hard?  Is it really a coincidence that Christian Dior struck gold with his “New Look” featuring ultra-feminine, conservative looks reminiscent of La Belle Époque in 1947?  Just ask George Taylor, he introduced us to the Hemline Index as far back as in 1926.  For the lockdown season of 2020, whether you are shopping at Primani or Prada, there’s a new look in town:  Long floral dresses and puff sleeves.  Comfortingly feminine, non-threatening – nostalgic.  And it’s not just the fashion you need to look out for.  Retro has been big news in graphic design for some time now, but when the big multinationals like Unilever or Nestle’ whip out their heritage packaging, buckle up Bucky you’re in for a ride.  A sure way to spot the economy is in the toilet is knowing you are being tempted to buy biscuits by enrobing them in the warm fuzzy happiness of nostalgia.

“1997” by Tiina Lilja, 2020, oil on board – work in progress

I am not saying nostalgia is inherently bad for you.  It is, however, incredibly seductive to remember only an idealised, simpler version of the past.  Jamie Windsor talks about the problems of nostalgia in much more elegant terms in his video essay simply titled “Avoiding Nostalgia”.  This yearning to recall an ideal past void of modern evils is a powerful marketing tool and harnessed so sell us things as well as influence our political decisions.  “Make America Great Again”, remember.

The art I have been making lately is riddled with nostalgia, but I did not set out to paint nostalgic imagery just to introduce you to my mullet, circa 1997.  People do not yearn for simpler, happier times in a vacuum.  I am talking about the mother of all nostalgia, the cardinal reason why we so crave that idealised past: fear.  Fear of uncertainty, fear of change and fear for what the future will hold.  He has been my constant companion in the studio for these past few months.

“1997” by Tiina Lilja (2020) oil on board

No filter more powerful is yet invented as that of the perspective of a child.  Somewhere between the Pogs and Dr. Bombay, I do remember the recession of my childhood: from the bread-ques (the Finnish expression for foodbanks) hand-me-downs and the evictions.  I suppose those were the things my parents would have called the new normal at the time.  It must have been a balancing act of royal proportions, but they pulled it off.  Out of many wants and withouts, we always had a roof above us, food and each other.  Although it took me years to stop feeling inferior in the company of those more affluent, I started school in the August of 1997 confident in my ability to achieve anything my heart may desire and largely unafraid.  A sparkling new cog eager to take their place in a machine being built on top of the old.  The fear of uncertainty, rejection and loss crept in much later, alongside the responsibilities of an adult and a need to find my place in this world.

As a painter, I need to make sense of my surroundings through the images I create.  If ever there was a constant I wish to cling on to when our world has turned upside down, it is art.  And I hope the art I am making gives even a fraction of the solace it has awarded me, to you and others stuck in the twilight zone of the new normal.

Keep calm and create,

Tx

Nothing but a Hound Dog – digital illustration

Greeting from lockdown guys – things have not quite reached the banana bread-stage of cabin craziness, but we’re almost there.  In avoidance of baked goods, I thought it would be nice to brush up my Photoshop skills and add new digital work on my illustration portfolio.

Now, I’ve used Photoshop in the past to work out packaging concepts and edit other work, including finishing off hand-drawn illustrations, but always steered away from making creative work completely digitally.  There’s nothing too dramatic behind my Adobe antipathy: I find making digital images less interesting than drawing by hand, partly because of my limited skillset in rendering illustrations to the standard I expect from my other creative work.

I once had a teacher who told me the biggest back-handed compliment you could throw on a calligrapher was to say their work looks just like it has been printed.  Fifteen-odd years later, her way of thinking still affects the way I assess my own design work.  Whether hand-drawn or not, the greatest value I can add to a piece of work is my handwriting: my personal style or approach, a wee touch of humanity, if you will.  When it comes to digital media, illustration in particular, I appreciate work that does not reveal its origins too easily.

Do not be fooled into thinking this means I despise digital means of creating imagery, on the contrary – I find it sort of magical.  Like good painting or a drawing, a good digital illustration carries a mark of its maker.  And do I think conveying a sense of individuality through the artists’ handwriting is more difficult to achieve digitally than simply by pressing a pencil against a half-decent sheet of Fabriano.

This is really what I have been practising recently – adding to my digital illustrations that little je ne sais quoi.  I chose to go about it roughly the same way that I began developing my style of painting, about a thousand years ago now: by copying other artists’ work, studying their methods of image making and listening to helpful advice from my seniors.  Thankfully, did not need to start tracing over Guernica from the pages of an art directory, technology has moved on a fair bit since the late nineties, and I simply watched helpful tutorials from YouTube, most notably from Retro Supply & Co.

A shout-out to these guys, they are great.

When it comes to learning, imitation really is a form of flattery.  It is pretty much the same as cooking industrial quantities of Nigella’s scrumptious banana bread until you develop a recipe of your own.  The process takes time and you are sure to find yourself in that awkward half-stage where your work is strongly influenced by a style or a trend yet undeniably yours.  Some of my early paintings are heavily influenced by the work of the Nordic symbolists such as Akseli Gallen-Kallela and the Pre-Raphaelite movement – does that make those canvasses any less my own in your view?

Returning to these illustrations I have been making:  As you can see, they are all dogs, mostly my own good-boy, Rusty.  Some are based on drawings from my sketchbook, others put together completely on screen and each finished to look like vintage prints.  It is a style I have been admiring from afar, thus it felt like an approachable starting point.

For the tech curious, I use Photoshop to make my illustrations, using a stylus on a touch screen rather than a graphics tablet.  As a painter, that pen-on-paper illusion genuinely helps me to bridge the gap between what I can achieve on paper and on screen.

I do hope you have enjoyed this interlude to view my illustrations.  If nothing else, it feels great to be confident enough on my digital work that I can publicise it to you here.  My side-hustling days as a freelance designer have been put to rest for a bit since I began working as a studio painter, but maybe this is something I should write about more.  The rift between arts and design is frankly ridiculous and I am tired of feeling like my design work is some sort of a dirty secret when exhibiting fine art and vice versa.  There are ultra-talented people working on both sides of the fence and we would be better off talking to each other more.

Tiina x

If first you don’t succeed…

Having spent some time with my Double Exposure-project and learned a bit of printmaking, I am now back in the atelier, working to finish my portrait of the two brides from the 1930’s.  Although I initially enjoyed working on people and costumes again, one detail kept giving me nightmares: the second bride had a really unpleasant face.  Compared to a pretty successful portrait of the left hand figure, this one seemed both incomplete and overworked at the same time, making the whole painting feel unbalanced.  Now, I am not one to give up lightly, but having tried improving this face several times without significant success there was only one thing for it: paint it over and start again.

Two Brides by Tiina Lilja – work in progress, detail

Two Brides, work in progress by Tiina Lilja – details of the old face before repainting

So, following a bit of doubt and self-pity, this is exactly what I proceeded to do… and boy I wish I had done it sooner!  Some weeks have passed since I got rid of the old face – when covering up large details with oil paint you must be careful about allowing adequate drying time, and I am now making great progress with this piece.  The new face is just how I wanted it: calm and soft featured, the perfect counterpart to my first figure whose confident form has hardly changed since I began the painting.

It is never easy to start again, having admitted defeat, even when you are confident about being able to turn things around.  I was terrified the old face was the best I could achieve and that kept me from making any radical changes for a long time.  Ultimately, if everyone was this terrified of failure, there would be not be a Guernica, or Sistine Chapel… no Jimson Weed.  True failure is not about ability or achievement at all – it is what you choose to carry with you when moving on from an adversary event.  In a society where an instant reward is expected to follow the slightest of efforts, it is natural to consider the absolutes of failure or victory as the only acceptable outcomes regarding work, education or personal development.  In reality, there is a huge and productive grey area between the two.

Two Brides by Tiina Lilja – work in progress, detail

Two Brides, work in progress by Tiina Lilja – after repainting one of the faces

If I would only stick to painting what I know well my work would be pretty dull.  I paint high end goods for a luxury market so the pieces I put forward must be of a good standard, consistently.  This does not mean, however, avoiding challenging myself or aiming to create pieces that are merely good enough rather than good.  The world of fine art can be fickle; trends fly by and what constitutes as good varies from person to person.  The only way I can be confident about my work is to paint to a standard where I am happy with everything, first and foremost.

Two Brides, work in progress by Tiina Lilja

Two Brides, work in progress by Tiina Lilja – adding small details

Two Brides, work in progress by Tiina Lilja

There is still a bit to go before Two Brides is finished, but I am on the right track again.  Being at peace with the faces, I feel optimistic about cracking on with other important details.  Today I am particularly excited about the pearl embellished head-dress of the first bride and the second ones capped veil – small details that are suddenly very visible without the distraction of that awful face.

‘till next blog,

Tiina x

Radar Artist Fair

Corpus Christi by Tiina Lilja 2019, mixed media on paper

Double Exposure by Tiina Lilja

Portrait of Santa Muerte: Nina Verde by Tiina Lilja oil on canvas, 2019

Back in the game, so to speak; I’ll be exhibiting at the Radar Artist Fair in the Old Spitalfields Market coming May!

Radar Artist Fair Old Spitalfields Market 10-12the of May 2019 Tiina Lilja

Radar Artist Fair Old Spitalfields Market 10-12the of May 2019 Tiina Lilja

 

Radar Artist Fair is an Artist Led platform to Amplify the Next Wave of Artistic Talents and Connect a Global Audience.  The Real affordable Artist Fair that’s affordable for Artists.   Artists taking back Control!

What’s not to like.

I have some great new pieces ready to go and others that will receive nifty new mounts just for the occasion.  So if you happen to be in London on the second weekend of May (10-12.5.19), come and say hi!

 

23rd Time Lucky

Here’s something that is bringing me joy this week: a brand new combine harvester sketchbook!

This one is the 23^rd of its kind.

I bought my first sketchbook relatively late, back in August 2010 when I began studying painting at the Edinburgh College of Art.  I had always drawn, but in a very goal oriented manner; sketching or any type of visual record keeping felt pointless if not simply antiquated.  The head of first year students strongly disagreed, however.  He wasted no time pointing out to us, a nervous herd of freshly baked art students huddled in one of the imposing Edwardian painting studios, how we were all missing one of the most important tools of our future trade: a sketchbook.  “An artist should carry one at all times”, he proclaimed.  Many people rushed to the college shop to buy one that afternoon, including yours truly.  From their large selection of different types of sketchbooks, notebooks and pocket-journals, I picked a simple A4 sketchbook, portrait format, with 80 natural white pages bound in black cloth, and I have never looked back.

could this be my new sketchbook?

seawhite of brighton sketchbooks and posca markers

sketchbook number 23 by Tiina Lilja – cover art in progress

sketchbook number 23 by Tiina Lilja – cover art

sketchbook number 23 by Tiina Lilja – detail

sketchbook number 23 by Tiina Lilja – detail

If you do the quick math, the average time I have spent with each book since that August long ago is around four months.  In reality I have devoted anything from three weeks to almost a year to a single sketchbook, depending on the type of project I am working on.  At times I draw solely to work out a composition or to try out a new idea, but more often than not, the pages of my books are filled with idle doodles and random notes.  Sketching is something that has taught me the value of drawing for leisure and shaped my identity as a painter.  Like a mother, I am proud of these volumes and I guard them jealously.  They are more important to me than any piece I have painted which is why I am far more uncomfortable about sharing them with the world beyond a few carefully chosen and decisively cropped highlights I post online every now and then.

sketchbook cover art by Tiina Lilja

sketchbook cover art by Tiina Lilja

sketchbook cover art by Tiina Lilja

sketchbook cover art by Tiina Lilja

Throughout the years I have tried out a few different brands, always returning to Seawhite of Brighton for their durability and great value for money.  This company made the Edinburgh College of Art-stamped sketchbooks sold at my university art shop and thus ended up being my go-to-sketchbook manufacturer.  I am not being compensated to advertise them to you – I wish I was, but I am not.  It is simply what I prefer.  On the flip side, the only brand I avoid is Canson, not because I would not like the quality of their wears, but because their A4 format is slightly stumpier than the one I am used to and I like my sketchbooks to be uniform in size.

Sketchbook number 23 by Tiina Lilja

Each book I have has a unique cover, drawn with white acrylic markers, those white gel pens or Tippex.  Well, each but the very first, that one I rushed to buy in the beginning of my fine arts course.  That particular sketchbook was stolen from my studio in ECA, which is why I started customising the covers in the first place – to make it easier to spot if someone was trying to walk away with my book.  After all, every student was encouraged to have a sketchbook and most of them were exactly alike.  All my covers carry a monogram and most are graced by a wee toy owl…, because why not.  The rest depends on my mood on the day I crack on a new book and the stuff I happen to be working on.  For example, one of my past book covers features a flying Volvo simply because I was painting portraits of my dad’s cars at the time.  The 23^rd cover is in turn purely decorative and, at least in my opinion, one of my better ones.  Covered in stylised flowers in full bloom, it has the perfect motif for a spring sketchbook.

Tiina x

Two Brides – on photography and figurative painting

I have a longstanding habit of painting double portraits.  There is something calming about a balanced pair, in both concept and composition.  Spaced out harmoniously on canvas, two individual subjects depicted as a complimentary coupling – if there ever was a trope in painting that gets repeated over and over again, this one is mine.  My latest canvas, Two Brides, is a perfect example of my obsession with twinned subject matter, special only as it features people rather than static objects.

“Cacolac” by Tiina Lilja (2015) oil on canvas (60x70cm)

“Bombay Sapphire” by Tiina Lilja (2014) oil on canvas (110x120cm)

“Gordon’s Gin” by Tiina Lilja (2012) 110x120cm

The other reason Two Brides stands out from my previous double portraiture is its basis in photography.  Generally, I would prefer to paint physical objects and still lives.  This is my comfort zone, if you will.  Unlike traditional portraiture with a sitter or an artist’s model, I am free to focus only on the surface of the subject being painted, without the need to acknowledge the feelings and needs of another sentient person.  An object does not move, nor does it complain about the lack of loo breaks.  The benefit of painting from photographs is in their fixed nature.  An image is the perfect model, unmoving and always perfectly composed, but the benefits of photography are far wider:  Simply by possessing the right snap, a painter is transported to a carnival in Venice, depths of the seven seas… even space – all in the comfort of the artist’s studio.  On the flip side, however, why take the effort in painting a photograph when you already have access to an image, in essence, a finished piece of art?

French wedding photography from the 1930’s

Two Brides – work in progress by Tiina Lilja

Two Brides – work in progress by Tiina Lilja

Photorealist movement aside, using photographs as a visual aid when it comes to figurative painting is a highly contested matter.  I know painters who openly look down on others who paint with the aid of photos and I too have reservations on work that relies solely on copying another image without any further curatorial input.  Especially as a student, the prevalence of these types of attitudes kept me from considering photography as a tool, even when it would have aided my research beyond regular drawing or sketching.  The only times I felt painting from a photograph was appropriate, for me, were cases when I had no access to the types of objects I wished to depict.  My Volvo-pieces from 2011-2012 are a great example of this type of work – the cars in question have long rolled into the big car park in the sky and only exist in my memory… as well as selection of snaps in my family album.  It took years and a bit of confidence to admit how I research my paintings does not need to reflect someone else’s view on what good painting should be.

“Volvo” by Tiina Lilja (2012) oil on canvas (90x120cm)

“Volvo Turbo” by Tiina Lilja (2012) oil on canvas (90x120cm)

The fact of the matter remains that photography is widely used as an aid when creating visual art, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly.  Painting does not exist in a vacuum and should not be confined to early 19^th century sketching methods for the sake of purity that never existed in the first place.  From Vermeer and his usage of camera obscura to the angst ridden art student I used to be, photography is a valuable tool that allows us to capture fleeting situations and moods like no other creative medium.  I would personally argue the usage of photographs has made figurative painting more inclusive and easier to approach.  Not every aspiring painter can access live-model classes and galleries packed full of classical plasters waiting to be studied – this being the way you should be learning figuration in the minds of absolute traditionalists.  Photography, in short, offers many their first contact in drawing a likeness and should not be dismissed due to its availability to all demographics.  Copying the works of the old masters is a long established tradition in art education and replicating a photograph in paint can be just as enlightening when it comes to learning colour-matching and composition.

Lapeyrose Wall by Peter Doig, 2014, (private collection) via the Guardian

Figurative artists who prefer photography over sketching create work just as creative and painterly as those who do not.  I am choosing to illustrate this point further, not with my own work or that of my friends, but by encouraging you to study the works of Peter Doig, a Scottish painter who utilises photography in his creative process.  I visited his retrospect in the National Gallery in Edinburgh more than five times in 2014 and the show had a profound impact in my view of figurative painting and colouration at the time.  I felt tight of breath standing in front of those wall-sized canvasses, bewildered by the wonder of Doigs brushstrokes.  Few would argue his work is anything but engaging, original and impactful simply because his research includes photography alongside drawing.

Two Brides – work in progress by Tiina Lilja

Two Brides – work in progress by Tiina Lilja

I hesitated for a moment before choosing to add snaps of my own research material for this particular blog.  Two Brides is directly based on a set of wedding photographs from the early 1930’s.  There is no way around that.  I made a sketch or two from these images, but the final composition was simply crudely photoshopped together to act as my guide when painting.  Combining elements from two photographs into a single double portrait is not difficult by hand, but utilising a bit of tech in this case made the process a lot faster.  Does this make me less creative or worse off as an artist?  In my own mind, the answer is irrelevant as long as the painting I am creating can be viewed as more than a collage of images taken long ago.

All I can say is that I cannot wait for this one to be finished.

Ta, Tiina x