Gracias a la vida/Thanks to life/Elämälle kiitos

2009, oil on canvas 30x40 (each part)

in private collection

The whole autumn 2009 I listened a lot Violeta Parra's Gracias a la vida song. That song is about glorying your life and my father listened it a lot when I was a child. Then he also told me how tragic is the history of that song. After awhile releasing that song Violeta Parra commited suicide. Thought of that has haunted me in my entire life. I can't understand how someone can do such act after praising every little thing that she has had in her life.

And so I did what I usually do when I can't get out of my mind something... I painted that song... or more like the feeling of that song's lyrics. The melody is bit melancholic.

Listen Violeta Parra's Gracias a la vida here.

Finnish version of that song "Elämälle kiitos" by Liisa Tavi is very beatiful too. Jaana Lappo and Merja Onerva has done precise work when they translated the lyrics. Listen "Elämälle kiitos" here. 


Part two:

And part one:

Night in Kyoto/ Ilta Kiotossa

2009, oil on canvas 50x40 


in private collection

Japan theme continues :) This picture is painted from the movie: Memoirs of a geisha.

The nodding doll/ Nyökyttelevä nukke

2009, oil on canvas 30x40

in private collection

This picture is about one of my poems that I wrote few years ago. The poem is about one place where I'll never want to live again. That place was so pressing and restricting that I wasn't myself there. I felt like I was only a someone's muse, tiptoeing geisha and a nodding doll. 

However the geisha in this picture seems to have inner peace and happiness... and so have I... now. Like they say: "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" or was it "what doesn't kill you, comes back again and try it even harder"? Nietzsche knew nothing!! ;)