Tag: ART

The Superpower

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We had another long and amazing talk about creativity. I love these discussions, I need them, I crave them. We continued talking about why we aren’t being creative right now. Why he’s not writing, why I’m not into the flow of painting. We established that being able to bring magic to the world by making art (in whatever form) is like a superpower. This superpower makes you special, makes you stand out, it elevates you from the crowd, it makes you fly, high above reality and everyday life.

But here’s where we have different approaches to our superpower. I am more comfortable flying than I am being grounded. Johnny is more comfortable on the ground than up amongst the clouds. He’s comfortable with the idea that he can fly, whenever he wants to – I am uncomfortable with the idea of having to land and spend time in the real world waiting for that special moment when I’ll get to fly again. “A superhero is a superhero because he can transform himself from an ordinary person into a superhero when he needs to. If he would be up in the air all the time, flying around, he’d just be a crazy person, flying without a cause, without a mission”, Johnny said. It made sense. I haven’t seen it like that before.

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I need to accept that I can’t ask from myself to be creative all the time and to not judge myself whenever I can’t find that flow. I need to be grounded at times in order to be able to transform and illuminate myself. I can’t be on a superhero mission all the time. Then it wouldn’t be special or the most private, intimate and wonderful thing I get to share with myself.

I have been forcing myself to use my superpower when all I needed was to be grounded and wait for the right moment to fly. And I’ve been afraid of crash-landing. Of broken wings. To have my superpower being taken from me. I’ve been afraid of losing my direction amongst the clouds. Of flying too high. To get burned by the sun. I have been confused about how to use my superpower and when – or when to stay grounded and enjoy life on Earth.

I have to learn how to use my superpower in the correct way. Then I’ll be able to transform myself when the right moment appears. When I’m on a mission to create magic – something rare and beautiful that isn’t a product of expectations or pressure, but the expression of freedom and joy. Just like flying.

A palette of emotions

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I am not only making research about colonial folk art portraits, I have also started digging deeper into the palette of emotions. As a portrait painter specializing in strong human emotions, it’s important for me to know the nuances of them, not only their basic color. There is a difference between anger, rage and wrath – and between anxiety, fear and terror. Since I’m working mostly with the primitive emotions (like fear, pain, rage and shame), it is crucial that I have a deeper understanding of how they work, express themselves and what their core symbol is to me. For example; I’ve used upside-down crosses to illustrate negative emotions, but without any nuances. It could be fear, anxiety, rage or plain evil:

Oh-La-La
Yin & Yang
Damned Family
Twisted Sisters

My latest paintings have the expression of rage, defensiveness and protectiveness:

“The Core” by Mia Makila, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 81 x 100 cm

Compare the expressions to my older paintings, where it wasn’t so much about rage but more about fear, shame and pain:

Bacon Colored Demon
Burning Vulva
The Mask by Mia Makila, 2009
Hysteria

You can really witness my inner journey by studying my artworks. From the time I was still living the symptoms of PTSD, to dealing with the traumas by facing them – and then slowly overcoming them.

I will be able to tell better stories through my art, express myself more genuinely, if I learn how to work with the palette of emotions. They are the raw material in my art and the core of my creativity.

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From my own death to a new creativity

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3 days until my love will come. I’m starting to feel like myself again, it’s a nice feeling. The seasons are slowly changing outside my window, it’s unusual cold for being the last summer month. I enjoy the cool weather. The grey skies and the melancholy. It feels like home to me.

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I’ve been resting for weeks or perhaps for a small eternity, that’s how it feels anyway. I’m tired of resting and watching TV series. But I’ve been studying art and I’ve thought a lot and hard about my own art. It’s been good for me. I don’t want to overthink things or to overanalyze, but it’s like with everything in my past – I’ve been going through life without reflecting on what my true voice sounds like because I have been so busy pleasing other people. I know that at some point in my career, I started to make art for my fans, for gallery owners and collectors, instead of making it for myself. Something that was so private and intimate suddenly became corrupt and compromised in public. I know exactly when it happened. Even which painting I was working on at the time.

This struggle to get back to my art, especially painting, has been long and hard. Just like a trauma can happen in a second but will take a lifetime to overcome, it takes a lot of time to heal a compromised creativity and an abandoned inner voice. I regret the way I deviated from my path to go where I wasn’t supposed to go. I got so lost. I ended up so far from myself. From the expressions I had inside but didn’t allow to come out. I got used to the resistance, to the silence of it, to the feeling of being dead and buried underneath the fear and the doubts.

From my diary 2011:

“It is more natural for me now to not be creative than to create and make art. My paint tubes and brushes are stored away in transparent storage boxes and waiting for this mental paralysis to be dissolved so I can use them again. So I can go back to how things were before.

It’s like all of me is stored away in an invisible, transparent storage box that separates me from my true identity, and from my desire to create. Like in a coffin, because I feel dead in so many ways. It is not an exaggeration or emotional debauchery – but an honest feeling rooted in my inner core. “

I know how it feels like to be dead. I know that the real death is not and the end of our lives but comes in the same colors and textures as life itself, but without your own sense of vitality. It doesn’t happen when you stop breathing, it happens when you stop believing in yourself, when you separate yourself from your core. And the way back is awfully long and painful.

At least I know what it’s like to die and to be awakened and resurrected, all in a lifetime. I have many important things to tell. I need to use that in my art. This phase of finding my true artistic voice after letting go of an older version is so unbelievably scary – you have no idea. But it has to be done. This process is just as private and intimate as the creativity itself. I’ll let you be part of it, but please know how vulnerable I feel to share these things with you.

But it’s an important and genuine part of my art and should not be undisclosed or forgotten. It is part of the substance to my future paintings and who I will become as an artist.

Time to get real

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It’s past midnight and it’s all dark in here. There’s something bothering me about my latest paintings. I don’t know what’s wrong and I can’t shake it off. When I started painting again after almost 5 years of blockages and artistic drought, I was so focused on getting passed the anxiety, the fear, the queasiness and the nausea I felt just being near my easel. Getting started again without feeling afraid was my goal. I’ve reached that goal and now I’m focused on other things, like finding the right expression, the right artistic voice, the visual language that is true to who I am now and letting go of who I was when I stopped painting in 2010. I can’t connect with certain elements of the style – but then I also wish to go back to other elements that I’ve lost along the way. I have a deeply complicated relationship with painting. I both love it and hate it. It’s the centre point of my creativity and yet I lack flow and a sense of clarity. I feel like something is missing and at the same time like something is suffocating me. I need to figure it all out before I go on working in the paintings. I won’t finish the one I’ve been working on lately. I wish I wasn’t this insecure about my art, especially the paintings. I wish I had a more cohesive style. But at least I’m not being pretentious or making horror for the sake of horror. I’m not a poser. I’m real and my art has to be real, otherwise I can’t stand behind it.

It’s time to get real.

But first, it’s time to get some beauty sleep.

About the artistic loneliness

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I woke up feeling somewhat rested, it’s been a while since I slept for 8 hours straight. My health is improving and I’m feeling positive about things. I’ve missed this feeling. I’m soon strong enough to paint again.

I’m lucky to have a couple of weeks left of summer to enjoy without any pain.

I’ve talked a lot to Johnny lately about how I feel lonely in my art. I don’t have a context here, I don’t have a place in the art world in Sweden and sometimes it gets lonely. I have a few other Swedish artists that I know and talk to, but we are outsiders in the art world here. Johnny wrote the sweetest thing about this matter:

“In terms of stimulation for your art and for your creativity – eventually you have to find that in yourself, in your life, in the things that surround you. If you depend on others to stimulate you in this way, it becomes a crutch, something you depend on to create, but you dont NEED someone else to create. You are a very creative person, very intelligent and you look beyond the surface in everything around you. You read between lines, connect dots -this is the stimulation that is in you and for you. When you look to others to provide that for you it’s a starting point, but you have it in you to find starting points. At one time you needed them to provide starting points as you were finding yourself creatively, but i think you have grown into yourself, you are in a place where you dont need someone elses starting points, you have a river…an ocean…a galaxy of staring points in everything around you. I think you have been around people who demand that you see things the way they do and you played with the boundaries of how they saw things in the world and created worlds around them that were you within these boundaries, but you dont need them anymore.
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If you looked at a tree I know you would find hundreds of ways to use the form the texture, what the figure looks like, how it represents how you feel or how you see something in the world. You dont need someone to tell you how to look at it or that you should look at it, but if you do, I am right here sweetheart. I am trying to help you not be dependent on others when I see you so clearly and I see how brilliant your mind is, how amazing your imagination is, how you have so much to say and that you can find a way to say it through anything around you. That’s the expressiveness and the creativity of being Mia.”
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It was so comforting and beautiful. I might be an outsider with my art, but I’m certainly not lonely with this kind of love and support in my life – in my heart.

A day out

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I’ve spent the day with a dear friend in Linköping today. I feel super inspired!

On my way to spend the day in Linköping with a very dear friend
Surreal view in Linköping (can you spot the shark?).
Stature with anxiety.
A scream in stone
A blind statue
Angel with wings instead of ears
Baby Jesus with a very odd arm disorder
A blushing statue from the early Swedish renaissance
Jesus caught on a bad day
Like something out of a John Waters film!
A child’s vision of an elephant
Impression
Me
On the wall
Hiding.
Swedish Summer
The old part of Linköping is so beautiful

To be a waterfall

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I’m just about to watch the last two episodes of Stranger Things and I’m absolutely in love with it. I can’t even remember the last time I felt like this about a series – which is funny because I’m not that into sci-fi anyway and I never learned how to appriciate Stephen King. I have never even watched The Goonies for crying out loud! But I feel inspired. I want to use that inspiration in my art.

It seems like everything around me is floating around like a river without any clear shape or substance. I’m in a transitional phase in many areas. And I’m changing. Again. I have outgrown so many things, so many truths and so many mannerisms in my art. I feel like I am just starting over all the time. I am tired of starting over. I just want to BE. But I shouldn’t complain since growing and changing are both part of my self-empowerment process and that means everything to me. Of course my art has to change as I am going through an inner metamorphosis process. It’s only natural, but I’m tired of feeling like I have to let go of things in order to make room for something new. Perhaps I’m overthinking it, over-analyzing it – perhaps I just have to let things happen without thinking about it as much. I guess I’m just insecure about these things since I was struggling with blockages for a long time. I am always scared that I will get blocked again. But I am full of ideas. Over full actually. At the time of my creativity blockage, a friend told me: “As I see it, you are not blocked because you don’t have any ideas – you are blocked because you have TOO MANY ideas and you don’t know where to start and it paralyzes you and you end up blocked.”  I think he was right.

I am still a little ‘artistically constipated’ – it needs to come out. And I’m still a little unsure about in which order. I have to many ideas inside me, if you only knew. I have a list of ideas for paintings, another list for ideas for short stories, books and lectures. I have created a mythology based on my traumas that I want to use somehow, but I don’t know how or where to put it. In words. In pictures. Or both.

For a long time, I thought painting was my main artistic expression but my recent decision to make it secondary to my digital art has been a sense of relief. But I still don’t feel satisfied. Something is missing and some things are too much to hold inside, it all wants to come out. Maybe I’m just scared to lose control. Because I know if I would let it all out – I would not be able to stay in the ‘real’ world – I would be all consumed and swallowed up by my inner world. But I need to let it flow. I need to dare to let it flow. The last time I let it flow, I got sucked into it and ended up all burned out. But I won’t allow that to happen now. I know more now. I am stronger now.  But I’m also more cautious now. A little wounded. It is a difficult balance to lose control and to let my creativity flow without resistance – and to hold back so I don’t get too carried away in my ambition and passion. It’s like wanting to jump from a cliff into a waterfall but dressed in a diving suit. It’s not very graceful or liberating. I think I just have to be the waterfall.

I just have to keep going. I am on the right path even if I am too restless and eager at times. I just want to flow. Fall. Float. I want to be on fire. To fly.

But first I want to watch Stranger Things! (I get goosebumps every time I watch the into!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPDZkbq0Zp8

Winds of change and understanding

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It’s been a windy week. I love the wind. It’s fresh and always moving in a clear direction. I like the energy of the determined movement. I’m spending the weekend thinking about my art and writing lists and notes about what digital art/painting really mean to me. I’ve found some surprising answers.

During the years of trauma treatment, I understood how I’ve been separating myself from the girl I use to be in the destructive relationships (the victim, the submissive Lolita, the sacrificing girlfriend etc). It’s like I’m doing the same separation in my art as well; I use my paintings to give the trauma a voice, and my digital art is more an expression of who I really am – a reflection of my dreams, fears and desires. My paintings is a collection of portraits of my demons, rage and pain. I make it all visible to be able to let it go.

This realization makes me look at my art and my creativity in a new way. I can see how I can use the two artistic expressions to tell a complete story – the story about myself. I use to believe that my paintings were my main artistic expression, but now I see that I can express more through my digital art but the raw core expressions comes out through my paintings. I guess I’ve been kind of conservative in the way I’ve been judging “physical” works as an art form with a higher value than digital works. What kind of a pioneer am I if I think like that? I have to be a warrior and to stand up for the digital art to make it as accepted as painting in the art world. When my friend and digital artist Joe Myers was still alive – we were planning to revolutionize the art world with a “digi wave”. I guess I owe it to him to go on fighting for the integrity and acceptance of the digital art.

These wild winds have brought me clarity. I feel like I can breathe again, without inhaling the haunting self doubt.

A change of heart

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Selfie, 2011

Everything feels a bit off and weird right now. I can sense a change coming. Another one. I can feel it. This time, the change is coming to me, I’m not forcing any processes to happen – it’s not coming from me. It makes me feel a bit lost. At times, I forget that I’m on this inner journey – I find a new level of my own consciousness and I feel awakened, like that’s the new reality for me to live in. But then, another breakthrough happens. I get these powerful realizations. Insights. The misfit pieces, suddenly have found the right places in me. Things that used to make me confused, suddenly makes more sense. I connect the dots. I see the bigger picture. Or I spot the lost and forgotten details, which are so crucial when it comes to understanding the bigger picture. This happened to me this week. Twice.

And here I am, not knowing what to do with what I found in myself this week. It is both liberating and also fucking scary, because this realization kind of forces me to change course in my art. I was NOT expecting that. I’ve been going with this ‘finding my way back to my art and the wonderful juices of creativity’ mantra for a couple of years now – and I thought I was in a steady place. In a place where neither doubt or a change of heart, could ever touch me. Boy, was I wrong.

The meeting with Mats Tusenfot and talking about the purpose of creativity inspired many new thoughts about my own art. I heard myself tell him (with no insecurity at all): “My digital art is my most true artistic expression, painting has too many limitations, digital art is where I can say what I want to say.” What the hell was I saying – why did I say it? Did I really mean it? Ever since I was 15 years old I’ve been painting and it’s been such a big part of my identity. That was how I started out as a young artist, I was a painter, and that is the core of my creativity and my artistic voice – isn’t it? My artistic voice is made out of colors in tubes, the smell of canvas, charcoal dust – it is not speaking in a binary language translated into hi res images and textures of clouds, waves and grungy walls in a folder on my computer, right? This is very confusing to me. Is my love for painting not the same thing as what I should be doing as an artist? Is my love for digital art forbidden and cheap?

“Scrollan” by Mia Makila, 2009, acrylic on canvas
“Phantom” by Mia Makila, 2011, digital

I need to figure these things out. And even if I feel a little lost and even if change can be a scary thing – I am not scared. The only thing I am certain of is that this is a time for a change that will lead to something lasting and steady. When it’s over, I will not have to struggle with self-doubt anymore and I won’t feel like I don’t know what my true artistic expression is. It is time to figure it out, once and for all. When I think about it – I’m  not at all lost right now – I think all these uncomfortable questions is a result of me taking control of every area of my life, including these sensitive matters. Because now, I am ready to explore who I really am as an artist. I know who I’ve been, I know who I became when I lost my way, I know what I am made of and what I’m capable of – but I still need to find out what my art really is about, so I can become everything I was born to be – and do what I was born to do. To be able to fulfill my life’s purpose. What a great journey I’m on. I am on my way.

I am on MY way.

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Selfie in my studio, 2009

Spending the day with my artist friend Mats Tusenfot

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Digital art by Mats Tusenfot

I’ve spent an amazing afternoon with my artist friend Mats Tusenfot (Mats Centipede) today. We are talking about making an art show together, somewhere, someday. It just feels like the most natural thing since our art is a little related, not only because of the digital media. I feel so inspired and full of energy! I don’t know many Swedish artists and I certainly don’t know many digital artists, so for me it’s important and wonderful to meet other digital artists who are familiar with my world and all the little details inside it (like hi res images of cocks, fruit, nipples, dead animals etc). Mats is a very inspiring artist with a lot of integrity and a clear layer of philosophy wrapped around his artistry (like the rings of Saturn) – something that really challenges my own way of looking at creativity and its purpose. I love that. It’s beautiful. And refreshing.

With my friend and digital artist Mats Tusenfot.

Photos from today

“THE BONES OF RAPE” BY MIA MAKILA

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“THE BONES OF RAPE” BY MIA MAKILA, 2016 [digital]

Detail studies:

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The anatomy of a broken sexuality. Rape is a complete murder when it comes to the victim’s spirit and sexuality, but yet it’s treated by our laws as if it’s a minor crime. Rape is not only a violent attack, rape can be many things – even having sex with your partner when you don’t feel like it but that is ignored or when a ‘no’ is not enough for someone to leave your body alone. This piece was difficult to make, but it felt important.

Upcoming collaboration with Candice Angelini

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Yesterday it was decided that I’ll be working with the French artist/sculptor/designer Candice Angelini in an upcoming art collaboration – and I totally am over the moon about this! Our inner worlds seem to be related with the elements of innocence and horror expressed through our art. I will use some of her masks and sculptures and create a whole world for them through my digital art. I am sure we will make an art show too, however I’m still too broke to invest money in art projects – but working with my art and being creative is all I need now anyway, the rest will follow. I will keep you updated about the collaboration, can’t wait to get started!

The editing process

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The preparations for my Laura Palmer shoot with Domenique in 2009 (collecting pebbles, rocks, sand and other things you can find on a beach to recreate the scene in my studio)

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Domenique (wrapped in plastic) and the homemade beach

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Original photo (untouched)

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The end result – “Laura”, 2009 (edited in 2013)

I’ve spent so many years editing the photographs of my collaboration with Domenique from 2009. In only one summer, we created almost 20 different characters together. The camera was our love child. We were like lovers in the creativity process – using intuition and instincts as our langunge, we did’t need to speak, we knew exactly what was needed in order to bring the characters to life. I loved working with Domenique but sadly her life started to fall apart at the time and rapidly slipped into a destructive lifestyle of drugs and drama. So I ended it and moved to Stockholm, stopped working with photography – and sold my camera. I am still without a professional camera. But when I have more money I will buy a Canon instead of going back to Nikon. I am a Canon kind of gal.

Me and my old Nikon, 2011

I have evolved immensely as an artist since that summer. I know more about photography editing now, my PhotoShop skills are more advanced and I collected new knowledge about retouch and portrait editing during the two months I spent as an intern at a photo studio last fall. So I can go back to my photo projects and make totally new pictures now just because I am so much better at the editing process.

But what does it mean to edit photographs? It’s so much more than to adjust light and shadow or cropping. It’s about bringing the photo to life  – and to create harmony and a balance in the colors.

Here are two versions of the same photo, first the original picture and the newly edited version where I have played around with both colors and expression. The original photo is softer, more stylish – but I wanted to say more than that – and I wanted the expression to be more powerful and direct.

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Sometimes, I see new potential in already edited photos, I go back and start over, like this:

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Original photo from 2009, edited version from 2009 and my latest version from 2016

Other times, I use the projects with Domenique as a base for my digital art – like I did in “The Crash” (2012):

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More editing work

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I have such a treasure trove in my computer. I love editing these photographs from my projects with Domenique. I WILL make something amazing with all these one day. Art show. Photo book. Whatever. I feel so inspired. And I will also add a photography category to my art section on this website (you find it in the menu at the top of the page).

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Fighting for the invisible world underneath our skin

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I’ve spent the recent days at various clinics to visit both doctors and dentists. Since I have such a deep fear of dentists, it’s hard for me to get the necessary treatment. It’s been a scary ride, but at least I am feeling better from the virus infection.

I’m still thinking about the thing Johnny asked me the other day – if I’m a rebel who is fighting for or against something. I’m still not sure.

Maybe rebels are always inevitable fighting both for and against something. Fighting against old system of beliefs. Truths. Patterns. Rules. Injustice. And fighting for a change. For a new set of ideas. Visions. Freedom. Compassion.

I think when it comes to me, I am fighting against my own past, who I was forced to become, who I was in the eyes of others, their expectations of me and roles I had to play to be able to survive, but also against bigger things, like the castration and the censorship of female sexuality, humiliation, abuse and disconnections. I am fighting for the freedom of the soul, for people to be able to be who they are without feeling shame.  I’m fighting for our core voice to be heard, to celebrate the sexual playfulness, the survival of the inner child, the expression of our demons, fears and anxieties – I’m fighting for a catharsis of the heart – to get rid of the darkness other people have forced into the our pure hearts. I’m fighting for the acceptance of our precious  vulnerability – the source of love, empathy, intimacy and creativity.

People usually label my art as “Lowbrow-popsurrealism”, “creepy-cute”, “dark but with a sense of humor”, “perverted and funny”,”raw and playful” or even as “art brut”. But most people agree on that my art is an expression of something real about our inner world – even though demons don’t really exist in real life.

Bacon Colored Demon

Bacon Colored Demon

It’s that realness of the invisible world underneath our skin that I want to fight for. This is why my demons are without skin. The invisible world inside is just as real as the one we can see, touch, smell and feel – and I’m trying to add all those dimensions to it through my art. My mission is to fight for its voice, heart and soul. The body-less body inside. The heart within our hearts. The texture of our souls. The burning and radiant core of our existence. To me, all these elements of a human being are part of our magic and it’s just too beautiful to ignore. Since I have a talent for seeing these things,  the invisible and vulnerable world underneath our skin, it would be a crime not to express them through my art and make them visible and accessible to other people.

I’m a rebel of the world of delicate rawness, love, light and the pureness of our natural sexual energy.

The need to feel dirty and messy

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Me and blueberry soup, 1980

Me and blueberry soup, 1980

As an artist, I have this curious need to be dirty and messy – covered in paint, charcoal, glue or whatnot. I have the desire to be all sweaty, from taming something – perhaps a canvas or a block of clay. I want to dig my hands into something I can mold and discover a hidden form within something raw and forgotten.

 

I think I’ve always had this need. Perhaps it’s just part of an artist’s genetics or maybe it’s because I had so many allergies and a serious case of eczema as a child and my body had to be almost sterile clean so I wouldn’t get infections. I don’t know why I have this need to feel messy but it makes me feel ambitious, like I’m part of my dream, working hard, using my resources, like I’m creating something that is part of me and that I’m part of – with everything I am. Like a testament to my life’s true purpose. To create magic with my own two hands.

Working with my digital art is an amazing experience – the creative process is more spontaneous and playful, but there is no messiness. It’s a very sterile process. So I need to paint, I need it.

My art as tattoos

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I feel very flattered when people send me pictures of their tattoos, designed to look like my artworks. It creates a very intimate bond between them and my art and I feel very lucky to be part of that intimacy. Here are some examples of my art turned into tattoos:

“Something About Sorrow” as a tattoo
“Starchild” as a tattoo
“Don’t Wake Daddy” as a tattoo

The original artworks made by me:

“Something About Sorrow”
“Starchild”
“Daddy’s Secret” by Mia Makila

Double versions

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It happens that I sometimes revisit my older digital works and continue working on them so they become something new with a totally different expression. Click images to enlarge.

Another Place, digital – first version 2007, second version 2012

Bianca, first version 2009, second version 2012 (and yes, that’s Domenique)

Vanitas, both versions from 2013

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Ship of Fools, first version from 2008, second version from 2012

Today is a parade of good things

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What a wonderful day it is. Grey skies. Rain. Love. Sensuality. Inspiration in the eyes of friends. And I’ve started the new digital piece about the house roots.

In the afternoon I received an email from my friends at iLLUSEUM in Amsterdam who wants to include my work in their plans for future solo shows. I feel so honored and excited. My life and career are slowly starting to blend and feed off each other. I’m on the right path, I can feel it.  An artist and their work are one and the same. Life and art becomes one single world of beauty and magic. But always slightly perverted in some way. Or exposed. Never left untouched. They would never accept the pureness of pigments but instead they would try their best to tame them,  because of a rebellious desire to be part of the creation itself.

My heart is open. It’s breathing. And I’m letting the rain inside to water the roots. Today is really a parade of good things.

House roots

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“Strings Attached”, 2015
“Iceland” 2015
“A BINARY DREAM” BY MIA MAKILA – 2016 (DIGITAL MIXED MEDIA) Edition of 10, 42 x 48 cm, PRICE: 5200 SEK

Something wonderful is happening. For the first time in my life, I’m growing roots and they are deeply connected to the ground. I’m not floating around in space like a balloon without a string anymore. I’ve found my place in the world just by being true to who I am and in the love I feel for Johnny. Geography doesn’t matter. Nor does circumstances. When you find your home, in yourself and in another person’s heart, external things are not that important. I am still broke but I feel very rich. To be poor is a state of mind (in this part of the world), feeling fortunate as well.

I’ve known Johnny for almost four years and our love story has been complicated and rich in details and colors. So much has been standing in our way – other lovers, bad timing, health issues, distance and money. But we are still here, we are still in this connection together. What started out as a few strings attached grew into a complex and beautiful root system. The progress of our love story is visible in my digital art. Look closer at the three pieces above. See how the floating house with just a few strings attached to a star slowly develops delicate roots which are a little more connected in each piece. Not yet touching but slowly making contact while creating sparks of light and warmth.

Some years earlier the houses in my art were adrift, hard to reach or full of smoke and flames – just like my relationships at the time were either explosive or disconnected.

“Out of the Nothing Box” by Mia Makila, 2014
All the Bears In My Garden
Can Not Reach Mommy

But there’s more happening than the creation of my new roots. My house is growing taller, like a tree – and I’m stretching out, reaching out, unfolding, pushing myself outwards like I have long and curious branches wanting to touch the world outside myself. Wanting to be part of it and making it part of my very own existence.

Johnny is setting me free into the world. There’s no possessiveness, no chains. I’m still struggling with fears, trust issues and insecurities at times, because of my traumas, but every day I learn something new from him about  generosity and kindness. He’s  making grow and blossom by letting me be me – all the way. I’m very grateful. I hope I am doing the same for him.

There is so much out there for me to reach for.

I will try to explore this new sensation of being rooted but so free to reach for the sky, in a new digital piece. A tree house perhaps. Or why not a house tree, somewhere between the depth of reality and the dreams within.

Primitive surrealism

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I’ve made a fun journey through different styles in my art. I started out as a surrealist. I was 16 years old when I finished my first real painting – a surreal self portrait. Then, I moved on to explore expressionism, cubism, more surrealism and then some kind of  a primitive realism.

Works from the time before I found my true artistic voice [1995-2005]:

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It wasn’t until I suffered a deep depression in 2006 that I started using my creativity and my art as therapeutic expressions. I also joined the European Lowbrow movement – that later turned into Popsurrealism. It was in the “big eyes-large-head” mannerism of Popsurrealism that I eventually would lose myself and my artistic voice – and then get blocked and mentally paralyzed for almost 7 years. The cutesy stuff was bad for me, it’s just not who I am. I’m raw and direct both as a person and as an artist. I don’t sugarcoat things. I use a lot of humor in my art but it’s never cute.

My boyfriend, who’s really clever and very perceptive when it comes to me and my art, came up with a good description for the paintings I’ve done post hiatus: “primitive surrealism”. I like it. I’ve always felt at home in primitive art and in surrealism so I guess both genres have helped me develop my own style and visual expression. From now on, I’ll call myself a primitive surrealist. It’s perfect.

Painting styles post depression [2006-2016]:

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It’s interesting to see how many similarities but also how many differences there are between my physical artworks (paintings, drawings, collages) and my digital art. I have gone from chaotic compositions in both my physical and my digital art to simplicity and stillness, but in my paintings I’m so much more raw and colorful, whereas in my digital art I’m more cinematic and poetic – perhaps because I’m also writing poetry on my computer, perhaps there’s a connection there.

My digital art [2007-2016]:

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“Fröken Ensam” [Miss Lonely Hearts] Photo suite, 2009

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One of my favorite photo projects I made with Domenique in 2009 is the one about Miss Lonely Hearts – a very lonely woman living with an inflatable man and a doll as her only family (although Domenique’s dog occasionally crashed the shoot). I wrote a script, planned everything from wigs, costumes, settings and location. At the time, I was deeply inspired by my favorite photographer Lars Tunbjörk (who captured the soul of Sweden in his photography while he was alive). Although the project is of a sad nature, it turned out pretty funny, thanks to Domenique’s outrageous spontaneity and my sense of humor. It wasn’t until a few year after the project that I understood that it was some kind of a cry for help – that I was the real Miss Lonely Hearts and that my relationship at the time was dead and I felt extremely lonely.

Here are some of the photos from the Miss Lonely Hearts photo shoot and below is a making-of video in Swedish (with my ex boyfriend Jimmy’s extremely loud voice narrating the video in a goofy way, I wasn’t as good at making videos then as I am now, sorry about that). I made the photographs ugly and everything in the story was supposed to be ugly to highlight the uncomfortable nature of loneliness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFgsdiWeDME&feature=youtu.be