ERIK NIEMINEN

Erik Nieminen is Finnish-Canadian artist born in 1985. He achieved a BFA from the University of Ottawa and an MFA from Concordia University in Montreal. He has exhibited in both Europe and North America, including recent solo shows in London, Montreal, New York City, and currently in Berlin. Present in both private and corporate collections, he is the recipient of numerous awards, including three Elizabeth Greenshields Grants, the Canada Council for the Arts, The Ontario Council for the Arts, and in 2018 became the Grand Prize Winner for the final edition of the Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series. He lives and works in Montreal, Quebec. 

My works present an independent reality, a liminal, unreal world that is dependent on our real world yet is separate from it. I seek to dismantle the reality that we inhabit in order to remake it according the logic inherent in the painting process. With that in mind my works cannot be easily categorized, as elements from many genres combine into one. I explore semi-real spaces where nature and architecture come into confrontation, and themes such as climate change are of implicit interest. While my work does not engage with the topic of climate change as a type of messaging, I am interested in the societal and cultural impact of these ideas and the conception that humanity can control nature or vice-versa. Aesthetically, I am mainly interested in the dissolution of space, perspective, light, and time through varying degrees of figuration where form is created through a responsive and adaptive process over a length of time. Colours and shapes are reworked until an ideal solution is found. The process itself then mirrors the way time works – gradually shifting reality until what is familiar evolves into something renewed.

Hello Erik! Thanks for joining me for Mint Tea. To begin, what’s your favorite tea? If you don’t drink tea, what kind of coffee or drink do you enjoy the most?

Luckily, I don't drink coffee. I'm one of the few, I guess. So I rely on tea for any sort of liquid energy as I don't drink energy drinks either. So, unfortunately, my answer is rather conventional, it would be green ginger. It provides a nice kind of detox effect and gives a good little kick. And it has the added benefit of giving you the warmth of wellness as well, on some level.

Could you tell me about your background and your practice?

I'm originally from Ottawa, Ontario in Canada, and I'm presently based in Montreal. I completed my BFA at Ottawa U and did my MFA at Concordia. At which point I left and went to Berlin for five years, which was always the plan, I wanted to experience something else and have a different perspective and maybe find a little bit of my roots in Europe. So I spent some time in Finland as well, at that time. And now I'm back in Montreal, where I'm working full time as an artist, and luckily showing with a fair amount of regularity. I’ve had solo shows here and abroad, but I’m also trying to cultivate a group of artists to work on smaller group shows that are focused on more specific thematics that reflect my practice, but also tie into the practices of the other artists involved. And maybe from that, then new kinds of contexts and understandings of our work can emerge and evolve and have these shows maybe evolve over time into multiple shows and so on.

I'm a painter. I like to say that I'm an artist, but ultimately, I spend most of my time painting, so thus I'm a painter. Drawing is a crucial part of what I do, so everything starts from drawing. Most of my painting involves some sort of subject that deals with urban space and manufactured ecological spaces such as botanical gardens or zoos – any of these kinds of mini-utopias that you'd find in an urban setting. And from that, because these kinds of locations are so rich in potential symbolism, and can tie into our current ecological and environmental situation, if you wish it to. You can really spread the seeds of possibility, which is ultimately my job. It is to through the paintings create possibilities in the minds of the viewers, not to necessarily express a defined thought or something that has, has political or social intent in a very specific way, but to maybe suggest that such readings are possible in the works if you choose to go down that path. But also simultaneously allow the works hopefully to breathe and exist purely as aesthetic objects of contemplation or alternate independent realities that exist purely for their own sake. So it's always trying to tread a line between our reality and the reality that exists in some form inside of the paintings, whether that be figurative, or realistic, or abstract.

What projects are you working on right now?

Right now, I'm continuing to work on paintings that deal with this subject matter, but also thinking about how light expresses itself and maybe changes the meaning of a work or the structure of the work itself. I think just pushing the subject matter in a direction whereby the actual potency of the possible political or social implications becomes ever more cogent. Again, without it, sort of hitting you over the head, but so that it doesn't get lost in just the aesthetic values. But, because I take maybe two or three months to make a painting, what I'm working on right now is the same thing that I was working on two months ago, which will be the same or similar thing that I'll be working on maybe five months from now: another painting in this approach. So it evolves very, very, very slowly, which is both good and bad. In other words, I don't have huge shifts in my work from one body of work or one painting to the next. It evolves over a matter of years, rather than a matter of months. So I'm still playing around in these manufactured mini utopias that I'm trying to create.

I am the most familiar with your oil paintings. Can you talk about how and why you choose to work with the medium that you do?

I love painting, so if one is to love painting, it seems, for myself, at least, that the most physical and forceful version of that is the medium of oil painting. I mean, there's other forms of painting that involve found objects and constructed materials and so on that sort of hedge and change the idea of what painting actually is, in terms of its conventional material, but I've always loved big solid oil paintings – just these things that you can look at and deconstruct the brushstrokes. They don't have to fall into one specific trope or another, they can be rendered in such a way as to have the brushstroke just vanish entirely or all you need is one brushstroke literally sometimes. So I love the material of the actual paint itself and how the material can communicate. Maybe more than anything else about the painting, maybe more than the content of the painting, the actual communication happens through the material, and oil paint being such a malleable medium in that way, I feel like it just opens up more or less endless possibilities for myself as the artist.

What is your painting process like? Do you start the painting with a specific image in mind from the beginning or does it evolve organically as you go?

It's a bit of both. I don't start with a specific image, but the specific image does materialize over time. So I start out with abstract drawing, essentially. I have dozens of just very loose or random, non-objective, abstract sketches that are just geometric shapes that interact on paper. Most of them are useless and just doodles, but sometimes one of these sketches, I’ll go back to it and I'll notice that there's some sort of visual tension amongst the shapes or something of that sort that, that attracts me to it, that presents possibilities for further development. I'll start to take those shapes and do another drawing that's kind of based on them and scribble other kinds of extensions of these shapes that then bump into other shapes, and so on. Eventually, though, not always, something might start to emerge that's maybe somewhat figurative, that reminds us of something. So at that point, I have an archive of thousands of photos that I've taken, and I also use video as well to document my surroundings. I'll go through videos frame by frame by frame and find moments of intrigue that are useful for potential paintings. So at a certain point in these abstract sketches, I'll start to sort through some of the images and find things that maybe remind me of, or can coalesce with the drawing and some of my other reference images. So in other words, a line might be replaced by a tree, or a triangular shape or scribble might be replaced by a bird, or something of that sort. There's no single image that actually works for the process, it's just dozens and dozens and dozens of little moments from various sources for the most part that through the process of drawing, turn into something somewhat recognizable, such that figurative elements then become alibis for ideas about visual space, essentially. I don't think of my works as figurative works, in some way, because it's really just something that emerges totally out of abstract drawing, and no specific direction. Though I do have subjects that I'm interested in, I'm not thinking about the outcome at all at the beginning. So then the drawing then starts to become a little bit more figurative, and at a certain point, I'll often end up producing a drawing that's quite a bit more detailed, that has all these figurative elements kind of more or less in place, so that I have a plan to start the painting. Because my paintings are quite detailed and complex on some level, and take a long time to make I do need a kind of a blueprint, I guess, from which to start the paintings. So that drawing serves that purpose. And then in the actual painting process, there's a lot of improvisation and changes that happen. I always say that the painting is in control and I'm just there to respond to it. Sort of like a boxer – it’s like a sparring session at all times. So it evolves into its place and I just sort of watch as it happens and try to accompany the painting as best I can.

What inspires your images?

My surroundings, essentially. I grew up in Ottawa, and that city has a maybe well-earned reputation as being “The City that Fun Forgot.” There's not much to do after about a day, and there's nothing sort of exotic or exciting about it. There's not much vibrancy in the city, you know, there's nothing particularly wrong with it, and there's nothing particularly good about it either. It's just there. It's a government city. And so I’d always look to these other artists, when I was growing up, I guess I was highly influenced by early modernists and these exciting kind of new discoveries that that were happening in their work. It was always based in these exciting big cities like Paris and New York, and wherever. I'd also look at an artist like Rousseau and see these exotic realms that I could really only imagine. Living in Ottawa, we didn't have any sort of zoos or botanical gardens or anything of the sort.

At the same time, I was highly influenced by a lot of modern or contemporary urban planning and architecture. A lot of these sorts of Mies van der Rohe-inspired glass structures that just are everywhere now, and it's just a part of daily life. And then going further, glass pervades our life, our screens and televisions and cell phones, and all these things that we look through constantly. It sort of expresses the duality of modern humanism: that we can't fully know what our reality is or who we are even, and that we live in an age of maybe illusion and maybe farce. So the reflective surface of the glass is a kind of portal into that understanding of the world or that idea, and so I'm surrounded by that in these urban spaces.

Then with the more exotic sort of planned jungle type images, it's something that you also find in urban space, which comes into conflict with this idea of illusion and knowing our essential character. These are spaces that provide escapes from the mundane world into this mini sort of Garden of Eden – this return to nature. Humanity grew up on the savannas in Africa, and it's curious that when we have any sort of choice in the matter we make these parks and zoos and botanical gardens sort of to simulate what we once had, before we then return through the streets to our to our daily existence. I find these spaces just fascinating, so I paint what's around me. Now in Montreal, here we have botanical gardens and the Biodome, which has a bunch of different kinds of ecosystems in it. There's a jungle one, there is a sort of a tundra type place. I find all that fascinating, these fake mini existences that exist only, I guess, in our fantasies, because they're not really real, even though they exist in a concrete kind of fashion. Now I'm just rambling, so suffice to say, I'm inspired by my surroundings and what I wish my surroundings were

Can you talk about the importance of light in your paintings?

Light sort of helps create the structure for my works. It reveals and conceals elements. And I guess fundamentally, lights and shadows, they don't exist, or they don't exist within the objects or scenes. So everything then becomes a sort of a theatrical stage in which you can create lighting conditions. So light then is a mere contrivance or something sort of manufactured within a space. I use materials, semi translucent plastics, metals sometimes, but a lot of plastics, some that are solid, some that are very malleable. I that I shine light through them and document and try to just sort of play around with different lighting effects that then I can inject into future paintings as a way to maybe guide the eye around or reveal a moment of symbolic potency. And sometimes even use them as a structure of the work. Sometimes these sorts of effects actually provide a very harmonious kind of blueprint from which to work from. And in those cases, the works can sometimes go in the direction of abstraction. So I use light very much as this material kind of guidance in my work, even though the light is all faked. For the most part, there's very little naturalism to the lighting conditions.

What does reflected and distorted light specifically mean to you?

Well, part of the thing that attracted me to the reflection was that it it's an ephemeral sort of thing. It exists only at one moment, and then it's gone, and so it's almost like a ghostly reminder of something else. It's also an allegory for something implied an implied space or an implied moment outside of the canvas. So it implies both: possible subject matter as part of the imagery, but also space. And so you can think of reflected light, not to get into too much of a spiritual sort of sense here, as a sort of a gateway into the infinite. So with light shining into a scene, then bouncing off a point of reflection it can be sort of read in a similar way to the point of infinity in traditional perspective, the vanishing point whereby you have one source of all things, and it kind of emerges out of that construct. Light emerging from one point, then reflecting out to the viewer implies something outside of the space, that can be just a formal device, but can also be an allegorical element as well.

There are frequent moments in your paintings where more representational images morph into areas of abstraction. What is the most important to you when this transformation happens? What do you decide to keep and what do you decide to leave behind?

It's really an intuitive process, I think. Sometimes, just through the drawing process, certain elements will suggest themselves in such a way that they don't need a figurative counterpart or anything in it, there's enough intrigue and potential there just as an implied moment of painterly fluidity that can exist just as a shape, which the viewer then can sort of provide their own mental transformation if they choose. Which is I guess, part of the general framework of abstract painting, is that it all exists in the mind of the viewer. On some level, all painting does, but especially that kind of painting. And so when my paintings end up being more abstract, or if there's abstract elements within the work, it's really entirely an intuitive thing. It's almost difficult to verbalize or even intellectualize too much, because there's no set system or rigid set of rules that dictate it. It’s just purely spontaneous, by the moment, like, okay, that works. It doesn't need more. Sometimes the simplest action is the best action in these cases.

Can you talk about any imagery or symbols that you like to work with?

Again, these happen sort of as accidents. Like I said, there are subjects and concepts that interest me within the sphere of my work, so therefore there's going to be symbols that are inherent within that. But because I don't start out with a specific goal in mind with the works, and I let that happen through the process in an intuitive way, symbolism at a certain point, it's a result of the imagery and the sort of formal moments, transforming or morphing into something via the use of replacing just abstract elements with something figurative, such that when you place one thing beside another, it starts to present potential. I don't I don't want any sort of symbolic elements to become specifically literary or narrative in that particular way so that they're readable as one interpretation. If I use symbols, I try to keep it pretty broad and pretty open. I use that maybe a lot of animal symbolism, like a bird or a horse, but this has a number of connotations in a number of different cultures. In northern mythology, the bird is sort of the source of all existence in life, but in others, it's another thing. For me, I guess, I just use animals as a general kind of symbol as sort of innocent witnesses to the scene around them. Survivors of nature, I guess, in a sort of a flood of culture. They’re the ones that are the link to the viewer in the paintings, because also we as viewers, we're also surviving in a flood of culture and of detritus. So these usually singular animal symbols are just there, partially, to provide a portal or a gateway to the viewer – something familiar on some sort of intuitive level, I suppose.

Do you think the size of the canvas that you work on affects your work?

A little bit, yeah, I tend to make large work. I know I need to make smaller work at some point. Someone once said that a large work is not a small work made large, and vice versa. In other words, they're two totally different sets of concerns. I want there to be a bodily relation for the viewer to the painting, so that they can move one way or another beside it, they can't necessarily see the whole thing if they come up close to it. They can read it from across the room, in one way, and then they get up close and they read it in another way. So that there's a sort of a semi-tactile experience, but also a shifting psychological interpretation – as you gain or lose distance from the painting, it changes psychologically. Whereas with small paintings, it's a different set of concerns, but you don't read these works from across the room in that way, it really exists in a very one to two meter space. So yeah, I think about the scale and the scale is important, also in terms of how I lay down the paint, it has to read in a certain sort of way. You can easily get sort of bogged down and precious about details, and ultimately, that's not really painting, then you're back to illustrating. Painting is about creating space. It's a two-dimensional space, but it still affects the space, the three-dimensional space around the painting itself. And so I want the paint to have some sort of relation to the real space that the viewer inhabits as well.  I want you to be able to enter it both physically and psychologically in some way.

I love your works on paper because they add another level of abstraction to your images. Do they function as pre-painting sketches? Studies? Or impressions of the images that are further explored in your paintings?

Initially, most of the work on paper was done as preparatory work for larger paintings. So at the end of the drawing process, I'd often do a color study on paper and that would be very loose, very gestural, just to get a sense of the color relationships that are possible. But at a certain point, they actually started to become works unto themselves, and I think that a number of them have gone off to lead lives of their own that never became larger paintings, that just exists purely as these small little works on paper that I thought of as sketches. But in talking to other people as well, they just thought these were finished paintings, and sometimes more interesting than the big works, which, you know, fair enough. Now I think of it as sort of a complementary side to what I do. I still use them as sketches, but I’m also actively kind of thinking about ways to extend them into more solidified and sort of serious finished works in some way. Or, once a large painting is finished, I can sort of base a series of smaller works on paper based on that and kind of restart the entire painting process based on one of my existing paintings, and sort of bring something else out of that, almost like a like a movie sequel, I guess.

What is your idea of utopia?

For me, utopia is a state of mind. Obviously, it's not a thing that exists, per se. The thing that relates most closely, I guess, is the ideal painting that I've yet to make, in my mind, that will never be made, because I can never achieve that. I always say that I am constantly trying to make the perfect painting. But that's, what keeps me going. But it's also futile, it's an endeavor doomed to failure, it doesn't exist. So utopia, for me, is a state of mind, it's a state of creating something that's just right, that's just perfect. And because my obsession is painting, for me, it's creating a world, a state of mind that I can then, you know, make physical into a painting and express it just right. But that's impossible, and even if I did, it would be a utopia for me, maybe but for somebody else who sees it, then it might be a dystopia. Because utopia is an entirely totally subjective thing and it changes from person to person. My ideal perfect painting in my mind that I can inhabit and create is my idea of utopia, and I'd love to live in that with everybody that I know, so I try to get as close as I can.

What are your favorite colors? Do they find their way into your artworks?

I don't have favorite colors, but I seem to just use a lot of blues and greens. I maybe have a thing for analogous color schemes. I don't know, I think maybe my Nordic upbringing sort of presented a lot of blues and greens, so maybe there's a subliminal leftover of my upbringing in there. I think subject matter just sort of dictates a lot of the color choices and then I can amp that up and change it at will. But yeah, I don't I don't have a favorite. And really I try to not be beholden to any sort of pre-established idea of color. I just kind of make it up as I go, and try to keep it ever changing so that so that I create problems for myself that I then have to figure out in terms of color.

Is there a new medium that you would like to try or to work in more?

Sort of. I'm producing these little sketches and clay, which are extensions of existing painting. So sort of remodeling my existing paintings in a sort of clay relief, which is an analogue for what a lot of people are doing in 3-D software and things of that sort. But because I try to keep everything as manual as possible, I'm trying to sort of create 3-D models, like digital 3-D models, but physically in clay in a kind of rudimentary way, which will then be the basis for future paintings. So that's sort of extending the painting a little bit in a new way, but it's very early going yet. So I haven't actually made any paintings, other than a few sketches, a few small oil works on paper. I've done that, but otherwise, I've not made a lot yet. I'm looking forward to seeing where that's going to go, probably in the next year or so.

Where are you located now? Do you think living in Montreal influences your practice?

I am in Montreal, I'm here in my studio in Mile End. You know, it probably does influence my work in some way, but not that much. When I was living in Berlin, I was still just continuing down the path, the evolution that I'd sort of established before I left for Berlin. And when I came back from Berlin, I just sort of continued the path that I had already established. But there are certain things, like the convenience of having some of the subject matter close at hand, like the Biodome, and botanical gardens. Things like that influence my work in such a way that it might not in in other cities. But what happens in the studio and exists in the studio, it's kind of a bubble, a universe that just kind of could float around and sort of land anywhere, and it would just continue, I think.

So I said earlier that I'm influenced by my surroundings, and I am, but I kind of gather that up, and then it's transformed in the studio into something else that doesn't really have a bearing, per se, on what exists outside. If I'm using a location or something, it's transformed to the point that most people won't recognize that location. I've actually made a number of urban paintings based in New York. Some of these are recognizable, but very often the actual locations themselves are not. I try to avoid any sort of iconic readings of locations and so on. I guess in terms of in terms of the sort of, pervading art styles and so on, that happened here, you know, there's probably subliminal influence, but it's hard to pinpoint now, especially that we're so inundated by a number of art images each day, if we are just active on Instagram or on the Internet at all. We see dozens of different kinds of works, so I think I'm as influenced by that as I am by what's being produced locally and what I see in person here. I try to stick to what I've established so that it doesn't become this weird mishmash of trends and ideas that other people have brought into the mix.

How do you stay connected to your community?

I talk to a lot of other artists. When I can, I do the thing of going to art openings from time to time, although being rather introverted it's not my sort of ideal environment. What I've been doing in the last couple of years, is I've been trying to bring together small groups of artists that have some shared interests to create these sort of self-curated group shows, which on some level establishes a wider dialogue with the community. Then if we can exhibit these shows in other locations, such as one where I'm involved with two Finnish artists and another artist here in Montreal, and the theme actually of that show is light, and different sorts of manipulations of light that happen in each of our practices. This show has been shown once in Montreal, it will be shown again this summer in Montreal, but then after that, it's to go to Finland. We haven't quite established an exact location yet, but it's going to go to Finland and be shown there. Then that'll establish a connection with that community on some level as well. I think it's trying to maybe establish a community based on the work more so than trying to network in a sort of traditional way in that sense, which I'm not very good at, and it's bound to awkward failures.

What’s your favorite tool?

So yeah, I don't have a favorite brush, but I have this stick with it with a lump of linen on top of it. And everybody is like, “what is that,” and they become a little afraid, take a step back until I explain that it's actually it's a maulstick, which you rest on the canvas or on the wall, and then you can rest your hand on it and paint. Because my paintings take so long, and there's a lot of stuff to work on, I sometimes need a little bit of that steadiness in the process. So I guess if there's a favorite tool, it's that because it's the thing that I just sort of, even when I'm not using it, it's here in my left hand. It's weird, it’s like my walking stick, but it's just sort of a thing that helps me paint. It's sort of a niche thing that the Old Masters used, a much less elegant version in my case. If you're making bigger expressive paintings it really serves no purpose.

What is the space where you do your work?

It's my studio. I have a little space at home as well where I make drawings, but my paintings are too toxic to be made at home, just in terms of oil paints and solvents and so on. I use odorless solvents that keep things relatively less toxic, but that only goes so far, and you can't really seal your home off enough, at least not me who lives in an apartment. So I make all the actual paintings in the studio space, and this current one is big enough, actually. It's great that it's been able to give me room to move around the paintings.

Do you have any ritual that helps you get into the zone?

I just make things difficult for myself, I guess. So there's no couch in the studio. There is a cot now,  but that's only used sparingly just to reenergize if I if I really need to, like 15 minute batches. Most of the chairs are hard and not comfortable, relatively. I mean, they're not uncomfortable, but they're not like relaxing chairs either. So I try to put myself in a situation in the studio, whereby the only thing I can do is work. The goal is to get to work within 10 minutes of arriving in the space, at least putting the paint out, if nothing else, so that I don't just sort of sit down and relax, because there is no place to relax. So there's no ritual, but there's sort of an anti-ritual in that way.

When do you know when you are finished with your artwork or a body of work?

That's always difficult. I think it's commonly a difficult thing for most artists. It's just when I think if I do more, it'll probably ruin it. Or if I do more, I'm going to be bored. I think it's to maintain sort of like a sort of consistent energy through to the end, and then if I arrive, and I'm like, “Well, everything's there. Should I do more? I could do more. But then, why?” When I start questioning why, why I should do more, is when I stop the painting.

Who are your favorite practicing artists?

I have a lot of favorite artists, and some of them were very well known, you know, people like David Hockney or something, but a number of the artists that I am collaborating with are some of my favorite artists as well. And first of all, just mentioned a couple artists that I don't know personally, but who I have been looking at a lot recently and whose work I think is great. One is Kyle Staver. Great work, and sort of coincidentally also seems to be making clay sort of maquettes. I think maybe prior to her paintings, whereas I'm kind of taking the paintings and making clay maquettes afterwards, but that is a sort of commonality there that I find interesting. Another artist who is great is Laura Krifka. She does figurative, moody, almost film noir-esque paintings of interiors and domestic spaces, but with very bizarre, semi-abstract cropping and compositions of elements within a space and figures. I just find our work very compelling. I don't know, either of them personally, but I just I enjoy their work. Some artists that that I know personally, I met an artist named Giuseppe Gonella in Berlin, an Italian artist who makes fantastic dystopian, figurative, expressive, but also very rendered paintings. It's a combination of expressive paint and very finely tuned elements. He uses myth and allegory in very exciting ways. Another artist is Vitaly Medvedovsky, who I actually met here in Montreal, but then we both lived in Berlin at the same time. He’s a Ukrainian artist who makes work that's sort of semi-fantastical, but not as fantasy painting, but just is trying to recreate his own history. He comes from what was the Soviet Union, and which, as he says, is a place that doesn't exist anymore. So he's sort of free to create versions of that in his mind and in his in his work, and sort of extend that into future possibilities. There’s a deep sense of history in his work, rooted in the past and present. Another artist that I know here in Canada, currently, based in Alberta, Sean Montgomery, who makes little basically abstract paintings – very, very small and somewhat graphic – not graphic in terms of violence, but just in terms of style. And it sort of plays with our history and little references to art history and different kinds of paintings, sort of jokey, abstract painting, but with a with an inherent sort of continuing layer of seriousness, which I find very nice. I think he's someone that maybe deserves more attention than he's been he's currently got. There’s an artist who makes what seems to be photorealist sort of urban landscape painting. He's a British artist named Nathan Walsh, who I'm currently collaborating with on a potential group project at some point, who sort of like myself creates space that's not based on a photographic aesthetic, who does it all entirely through drawing. So he'll calculate very intricate perspectival schemes on the canvas The drawings are truly insane, like there's thousands of lines that are just converging in different spots and points and then the end result sometimes looks totally realistic, but it's the sort of thing where the longer you look at it, you realize that it's an impossible scenario. Super detailed painting but also very painterly in passages, just just great painting.

What gives you the feeling of butterflies in your stomach?

I think it's the feeling of not knowing what's coming. And that could be in terms of art, and it could be in terms of anything else. I think I try to sort of maintain a certain level of control in my life, just in terms of, even my paintings, they require some amount of planning and control, just because the process is as intricate as it becomes. So the idea sometimes, like in terms of art, of a painting, sort of coalescing and congealing into something that I didn't expect, is one of these incredibly exciting things that is simultaneously unnerving and mildly terrifying. And I don't know what to do with it sometimes, and I don't know where it's going, and that is very exciting and sort of gives that feeling of butterflies. Sort of like when you're going down a rollercoaster, it's a similar idea. But also just like going out for a bike ride on a sunny day, and then you see the clouds approaching and you think, well, I don't know where this day is going to end up. That's exciting and butterfly-inducing. Just sort of heading into the unknown, whether it's psychologically or quite literally. Future possibility.

www.eriknieminen.com | @eriknart