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Christmas lights

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It’s Christmas. I feel tired but happy. It’s been such a long year, an overwhelming year full of hard work and healing. I love Christmas, it’s my favorite holiday – mostly because people are more generous with their warmth and acceptance during Christmas, but also because the focus is on the light when the world feels all dark and cold. It’s comforting and beautiful.

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I feel very loved and touched by all the kindness I’ve met this year – I’m not only talking about my love, Johnny,  I’m also talking about you – my dear blog readers. You have supported me through heavy times and shared my happiness. Please know how much I appreciate your presence, words and that your support makes me go on, even when it feels impossible. Thank you – and Merry Christmas! ❤

2015 – My year in pictures

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2015 has been one of the toughest and at the same time one of the best years of my life. It’s been an important year of rediscovering my creativity, exploring new concepts as true love, lasting happiness, freedom and the first steps to independence. I’ve grown so much this year, I don’t even feel like I am the same person as I was in January – perhaps mostly because I’ve slowly been taking back the control of my life and ended some toxic and destructive relationships that were draining me. Now, I’ve become a minimalist in the sense of what I have in my life – only good things and people who makes me happy and inspired are allowed to stay in my life, the rest has to go.

January – a frozen world in so many ways. Still homeless and living with my parents. I miss having a life outside my own head.
Vulnerable.
Fighting my past. It’s painful – but I’m winning. Big time.
February – with my little niece Lilith in Stockholm.
Breaking patterns and ending toxic relationships.
“Strings Attached”, 2015
A new kind of happiness.
Working on “The Fourth Eye”
March – Fragile but strong.
April – With Lilith
May – Signing the contract to my own apartment – I am not ‘homeless’ anymore.
June – I finally move into my new place! My new life is about to begin.
My new studio.
Taking late night walks.
I am starting to feel a new sense of freedom that I’ve never felt before.
Working with my fear makes me overcome a lot of issues. It’s hard work but at least I am trying.
But sometimes, the fear is winning too…
Article.
Summer sunshine – inside and outside.
I don’t get the name of the pizza place in my neighborhood – “Why not pizza?”
Meeting my best girlfriend Nanci when she’s visiting Sweden over the summer.
Lilith (digital)
August – The river close to where I live. I have left a lot of old heartache by this river. It will never return.
Working on “His Wet Dream”
On my way – to many new destinations.
Stormy weathers. Stockholm is being a drama queen when I return to print some art.
September – I’ve seen so many amazing documentaries this year! I especially loved “The Jinx” (documentary series), “Making a Murderer” (also a series) and the “Serial Podcast” – but other good documentaries were “Twinsters”, “Iris”, “What happened, Miss Simone?” and “The Wolfpack”.
Making plans.
Feeling exhausted – it’s been such an intense year already.
Doing the impossible.
October – Meeting my big love – Johnny, my brand new American boyfriend. We have been best friends for almost three years already. I feel so lucky.
Johnny. He is just made of love.
I feel so at home.
Peace of mind.
We are a team. I’ve never been in a team before.
November – My health is bad but my heart is finally healing.
Tears with engines.
December – A frosty view from my studio window. The big cemetery is covered in coldness but I feel so warm inside.
Back to work after a long break since the summer.

My video messages from 2015:

Thoughts around noon

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Right now. A messy view but the place where I belong.

It’s noon. I am still sleepy, I didn’t sleep well – I am haunted by nightmares again. The things I try to not think about during the days pop up in my dreams at night. The brain is fascinating, because it takes care of your unwanted feelings and thoughts and try to process it anyway. But the problem is that I have an excellent “dream memory” – I remember most dreams, very vividly and I can revisit places my mind makes up, over and over again because my dreams are so detailed.  Places that doesn’t exist in real life, but for some reason are real in my dreams.

I’ve been thinking about my imagination – and how flexible my mind is. Almost acrobatic in its way of bending inwards for endless deep and meaningful monologues or building its own worlds with the help of my imagination – and outwards in the way I feel so connected with the world and some people, I am without a doubt an empath. My mind can do almost anything I want it to do – go to dark places, go to bizarre and strange places, to complex and mysterious places, or to be raw and real in the approach to things.

The only way it can’t bend is to be logical and strategic when it comes to power. Which is, of course, necessary in real life, which creates problems for me sometimes. Especially when there are gaps in logic or reason, when I don’t understand why people act or do the things they do. My mind tries to bend itself inside out for an answer, but fails every time.

I am also very uncomfortable around people who can’t seem to connect to their minds at all – people with a brain that can’t bend in any direction but stays in a stiff position because of their disconnect.

I am proud of my athletic mind. It will take me anywhere I want to go in life.

An artist’s process

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An artist’s thought process while starting on a painting that doesn’t feel quite right… I am working on this piece right now and I got frustrated and almost threw it out the window in anger but I changed it and now I’m back on track. I have to stay with my true expression: rawness, ugliness and vulnerability, that’s my thing. As soon as I add hair to the figures they look pretty and cute and I don’t make pretty or cute art. Period.

Moments of my life

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“Spookyman” in his frame, 2008.
A collection of articles and interviews.
My only piece where I’ve depicted the abuse from my marriage (2006).
With shorter hair, 2007.
In the darkness of the divorce, 2003.
Trying out a new style, 2013.
Fan art.
Here I am, at the age of 18, looking older than I do now.
Working on “Sex Monster”, 2013.
When I decorated my living room as a winter wonderland in 2009.
My muse Domenique dressed up like one of my demons, among my demons on the wall.
At an art opening in Sweden, 2009.
Ny painting “Vagina Monster” in an art magazine, 2010.
Preparations for an art show in 2010-
Fan art – it’s me, everyone can see that!
Digital work in progress, this didn’t feel right so it became two different pieces.
Interview.
A very early painting from 1996.
Me and a Russian banana cake, 2009.
Blogging, 2010.
My favorite selfie, through a metal lamp, 2013.
Pondering, with a broken heart, 2013.
A messy studio is a productive studio, 2008.
Three moments, the same location, three completely different moods.
Painting, 2009.
Adoring Madonna at the age of 13.
Fan art again, someone made this for my birthday in 2013, they obviously knew I love pugs!
This is how I always rode the stroller. I didn’t want to miss a thing!
An old blog design, 2008.
An art show in France, 2010.
2010, feeling abandoned but I stayed in the relationship for another 4 years.
Blonde in 2005.
Posing, 2006.
I love this triptych I made in 2006.
My life has always been about self expression.
Buddy Nestor’s portrait of me, in the making., 2010.
In the printing process, for an art book, in 2010.
My favorite photograph of Domenique I took at a cemetery in 2014. It makes me wanna cry.
Having fun with a wig, 2010.
Painting “The Mask” in 2009. The last painting before my long creativity blockage.
I’ve inherited my artistic talents from my Finnish grandmother – who was very creative. At one point she turned her living room into a forest, with real moss on the floor, trees, branches, leaves, bushes, roots and all the different elements that you can find in nature. Here is a photo of my dad and his siblings, and one of my grandparents in this little enchanted forest.
My grandmother.
with my best friend Nanci, 2009.
Studying art in bed, something I do a lot. It’s cozy. 2011.
I love this little boy, 2012.
BOBO! 2011.

This is what change looks like

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This is what change looks like. Notebook after notebook of therapy work and self explorations to become a better and stronger person, to heal and overcome PTSD – and to change or break destructive behavioral patterns. 2012-2015.

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Writing projects

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The whole year, I’ve followed a ‘life plan’ that I created for myself last year. It had 5 steps in which I had to deal with issues, problems and to be more hands on when it comes to solutions and getting stuff done. I’ve done everything on that list and I feel proud of myself and my accomplishments, small and big.

I was totally lost for many years – and I felt like life and situations were controlling me and not the other way around. With a life plan, I feel in control of my own life again. I have a plan for next year too, and I’ve set short term goals, long term goals and also defined dreams and wishes for my distant future. They say that you shouldn’t tell anyone about your plans, then you are less likely to go through with them. I won’t tell you all about my plans and dreams, but I will tell you that I am going to start writing – I mean more than in this blog. I already have 4 different writing projects in my head.

I am sure it will take me a lot of years to write them, but I am in no hurry. I haven’t been writing anything other than these posts for 10 years now, but as I teenager, I was waiting all the time. I spent more time writing than painting then. And when I met my abuser, who wanted to become a writer, I stopped writing all together because he made me feel ashamed of it, because he had read more books than me, I didn’t know what I was doing. And if I ever tried to write anything, I was punished and silenced.

I’ve met that resistance throughout my life, and I am finally breaking free from it.

So, it’s time to explore a new side to my talent of self expression. It’s time to share what stories I can’t tell through my paintings and pictures. I feel confident and inspired.

The stories behind my art: “Another Place”

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Another Place

Another Place, 2007 – digital

2007 was one of the best years of my life. I was totally lost in that magical flow of making art, experimenting, exploring and being creative almost all hours of the day. I was having fun and trying out new techniques and styles.

Only 2 years earlier, I was only painting (see photo below) – and now I was making collages,  using mixed media, paintings, drawings and also digital pieces.

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A painting from 2005 (“Cries and Whispers” – referring to the 1972 film by Ingmar Bergman.)

Another Place was my first real digital artwork and I finished it in late 2007. I had only used PhotoShop to edit the photos and selfies for my blog for a couple of years, but I had no real training, just playing around and trying stuff out. While making Another Place  I could feel how I was growing as an artist and that the digital media was just right for me and my artistic expression. I was just having so much fun!

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The work in progress.

Another Place premiered in my solo show at Hera Gallery in Stockholm in January 2008:

And then one month later it showed up in my solo show in Reijmyre outside my hometown:

Even though I had so much fun making Another Place, I made it during one of the hardest times in my life and I was deeply depressed. That’s what the piece is about – that other place in life where only darkness rule.

When I finally came out of my depression, I thought it would be fun to make a new version of Another Place, because I had reached another place in my life. A place where light ruled, and where the colors were brighter. So I created a second version of it in 2012.

Another Place (second version)

Another Place (light version)

Another Place (light version) in Inked Magazine, 2014 and the darker version in Calle Magazine from 2010.

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Christmas spirit

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I’m still not well in my health, but I feel happy and inspired – and I am filled with a warm sense of Christmas spirit. I’m gently approaching my art again, so I won’t feel stressed or pressured. It’s been such a long time since I was in that wonderful flow of creativity and imagination and I need to slowly work myself up to that place – because that’s where the magic happens and that’s where I truly belong. I’ve learned so much about myself and about creativity during these 6 hard years where I’ve been struggling with blockages and self doubt. As soon as you start doubting your own talent or comparing yourself to other artists, you’ll lose the joy of creating and the connection to your natural artistic language. Then you start avoiding it all, because you just feel like a big failure, that’s when you feel like you are blocked. The only thing you’re blocked by is your own fear of not being good enough. I thought it was about changing style, technique, environment, supply, routines or to wait for new divine inspiration – but it’s all about refocusing on what the creativity means to you and your life, redefining why you choose to be an artist and to isolate your mind from outside influences in order to reconnect with your core where the artistic expressions are born. And to work on the self esteem of course.

I still have some work to do when it comes to my self esteem.

This has been a long year. In the beginning of the year, I was sort of ‘homeless’, living with my parents, I was broke, with all my things in a self storage place, heartbroken and sad – and here I am, putting up Christmas decorations in my new apartment, I have a new boyfriend who is the kindest, sweetest, most generous person I have ever known, my heart is healing, just like the scars inside my mind – I am still broke but even so, I am happier and more hopeful than I’ve ever been. All I need now is better self esteem and more money. I’ve got the rest covered. I guess those things are perfect challenges for me to take on next year.

Weekend

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I’ve spent this weekend with some dear old friends. I feel so grateful.
Childhood friends.
And now it’s time to get back to work. To get lost in the world of color and expression.
In love. Out of destructiveness. Above the pain. Under the spell of inspiration.

Boundaries

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[photo found on tumblr]

I’ve been faced with some setbacks lately. I’m disappointed in myself and it feels like I am failing. It’s one step forward, two steps back at times; the self-doubts are seeping into my mind again and I lose the connection to myself. It happens when I am around “power people” – people who wants to exert their power over me to feel better about themselves. Because of the PTSD – and the toxic relationships in my past, I am highly intolerant to this personality type.

I am a strong person, I am celebrating who I am and I never want to be something I’m not – and yet this is happening, over and over again. I lose myself in their vision of who I should be – submissive, quiet, a puppet for them to control, without a voice of my own – and who can’t stand up for myself even though I am so good at doing that in so many other areas of  my life.

It’s something with these power people,  the narcissistic personality type with no empathy or emotional intelligence, and me. Like a dangerous chemical reaction. I don’t know what happens. Why my boundaries all of the sudden are melting, bouncing or expanding so that they can do things to me that I don’t like without me responding to it. I hate this. I need to find a way to keep my boundaries intact around these power people, even if they are hungry to destroy them so they can control me or use me to fill whatever need they have in themselves, to feel superior or to feel in control – or both.

The worst thing is that this is totally distracting me from making art and enjoying my new relationship and the happiness it brings to my life. My PTSD symptoms are back.

But the good thing is that I’m aware of the dynamics between me and the power people, and  I am willing to work hard to keep my boundaries intact. At least I can see when it’s happening and I feel how wrong it feels – it’s unnatural for me to be submissive even though I am following a destructive behavioral pattern that happens when I am forced into that role.

I need to be more selfish – and to grow a tougher skin.

And I need to make art, I feel lost without it. I will start on a new project – tonight.