Mikko Erkki Paakkola
Basic information
b. 1961, Lappi TI.
Painter
Residence: Turku
Contact information
Phone number: +358-50-5287382
Email: paakkola.mikko@pp.inet.fi
Artist’s Statement
When you start to get defined as a middle-aged painter there is no way to avoid a look towards the past, instead of planning the never-ending future. And then you start asking yourself certain questions, and the question is not what you were doing the last half an hour. You start to think where you have been for the last half a century.
I have been in the paint. It is funny to admit. Of course there have been quite a wide range of activities that I have had alongside, like playing ice hockey, having family dinners, telling bad jokes and doing all the things that a responsible citizen is supposed to do. But still. Basically I have been in the paint.
And this means something. It means being without doing. Usually one might think that painting is acting; there is even an art form called action- painting. But the case is not like that. To paint is to be. Or, actually, the most important thing is to see. So, in these terms, to be is to see and to paint is to watch.
As a matter of fact I could be rather proud of myself about concentrating for more than twenty years in the act of being. Not an easy task. To do nothing. If one follows this path clearly it is easy to find out what this is about. It is about meditation. Instead of searching for my mandala I just have been watching my paint to dry. But the act is the same: to find the state of mind where you yourself get lost. And maybe, in the very end, I have found my mandala. Which is the work done. The painting.
Mikko Paakkola April 2007, updated 2019
I have been in the paint. It is funny to admit. Of course there have been quite a wide range of activities that I have had alongside, like playing ice hockey, having family dinners, telling bad jokes and doing all the things that a responsible citizen is supposed to do. But still. Basically I have been in the paint.
And this means something. It means being without doing. Usually one might think that painting is acting; there is even an art form called action- painting. But the case is not like that. To paint is to be. Or, actually, the most important thing is to see. So, in these terms, to be is to see and to paint is to watch.
As a matter of fact I could be rather proud of myself about concentrating for more than twenty years in the act of being. Not an easy task. To do nothing. If one follows this path clearly it is easy to find out what this is about. It is about meditation. Instead of searching for my mandala I just have been watching my paint to dry. But the act is the same: to find the state of mind where you yourself get lost. And maybe, in the very end, I have found my mandala. Which is the work done. The painting.
Mikko Paakkola April 2007, updated 2019
Current information
Aboa grant 2023, a one-year operating grant for Turku-based professional artist.
