True grit - hard like flint - TIMO MÄHÖNEN !

Initiator and gutsy risktaker

Timo Mähönen, 45, is in his absolute prime. After many successful exhibitions, enterprises and projects he is ready to change his strategies and return to traditional painting.

"You bet!" Timo Mähönen, painter and community-artist, answers to the question whether "stagnation and non-creativity" in the cultural and art sector is over from a South-Eastern Finland point of view. "Now I strive to grab the moment - "Carpe diem!" as Horace says. I work intensively, but still without stress. I have to admit, though, that I myself am a prolific consumer of art and cultural happenings". You can describe Mähönen with epithets such as jovial, humorous and polite having had a traditionally loving and affectionate upbringing. Colleagues and cultural people can also talk of him as being correct, altruistic and honest to a fault. "These days artists live under a greater economic pressure than ever, but it would not have to be like that! Why is the quota principle not followed when building new, especially not so on the provincial level? Municipal art-funding budgets are cut all the time. In a town Kotka?s size there should be an artmuseum and additionally to that a consequent and sensible artpolicy respecting the artists as the true professionals they are. If the artists, as is often repeated in speeches, are a valuable resource of society, developers of innovatory basic principles and social activities, why are they not seen more in the decisionmaking in politics on a municipal level? And moreover, too many artists are graduated from art academies. The artfield is all muddled up. Wake up, artists!" Through the years Mähönen has often been criticised from many directions, not least politically. And has survived! " I am still standing", he quips. The versatile artist, born in Karhula, knows the hard way all the tricks, trials and tribulations of the local artlife.

Sensitivity and emotional intelligence

From the start of the 1980s to these days there has happened a lot in the cultural sector and artfield.In the socalled "mad years" at the turn of 1990 there was a national economic "bubble" as well as in art eventually leading to an economic depression which caused to the economic downfall of the "pedestalled star artists". The art market was bad for quite some time. Mähönen has dared to choose an other way of working than his artcolleagues and friends. He chose to paint less and began to teach. During the deepest slump in 1992-1994 Timo Mähönen once more changed his strategy and with his friends formed the nowadays legendary "Art Stevedores-group". Mähönen?s vision was that the experiences of success and art-sales will be based on something else than just oilpainting, and furthermore from outside of Finland. Mähönen has been able to judge rightly people?s needs and willingness to buy art. Mähönen thinks it is important to keep up the tempo and subtle rhythm-changes. "The ability to react to new challenges in the field is important. The world changes rapidly and only change is constant". Sensitivity is important in mastering and leading projects and processes. "Leading and coordination cannot be performed from a distance. I have quite often seen even good projects end in complete failure and chaos which almost always is caused by planning and action being performed by different instances. Planning and performing should be made by the same people and on the same level. No organization can endure double performances and lacking transparency; in other words that nobody really knows what is actually done, with what time schedule, with whom and most important of all: Why?

Motivation and ambition

For quite a while there has been in Finland as well as elsewhere a fanatical worship of youth regarding socially active people and artists especially so. Age-segregation is a reality and soon it will reach ethically and morally doubtful levels. In spite of this Mähönen is still extremely motivated. "If one is able to rejuvenate oneself, learn and develop, the experience is most positive. One is able to question and even question the questioned, to ask the necessary questions, to innovate, vary and doubt. The meaningfulness of work grows as well as the desire for ever better results. An artist who does not renew himself may hinder development and be an obstruction, barring renewal and improvement. Renewal should, however, not become an absolute value in itself.", Mähönen says.

Energy and activeness

When a person ages his mental and physical faculties start to weaken, while young people most often still have them at their peak. "At some stage these differences just start occurring. This directly affects the work-performance and work-processes, because not even individuals or workgroups can predict everything". Age makes people bitter and often easily numbs the mind if the attitude regarding learning is not quite correct. "Working in arts is challenging and taxing and demands continual work and a humble need to learn from the artists. Because there always is more to learn one just needs to be qurious enough and hungry for knowledge, so that the situation would not become too depressing. The time of Bohemic artists is over, however sad that may prove to be"!

A psychological and physical activeness should be kept at as high a level as possible. "There is plenty of information from both within and without. The visual and literary malstroem is accelerating all the time. These things can be pondered over on hiking- or fishingtrips or even when pumping iron or biking", Mähönen says. Thinking and pondering often means doing croquis-drawings and sketches as well as planning or writing scripts for budding projects. "During weekends I use to sit in my rocking-chair stroking my cats, having herbal tea and playing mahjong. I jot down sketches of this world, both of the mind and externally, and am continually writing down ideas and reflections which I start to work on early every Monday morning".

Experience

"Experience creates and gives new sceneries", Mähönen says and goes on: "maybe one sees matters in a longer time-perspective and also reveals larger trends in artlife as well as in cultural activities, some people are quite capable of it even without experience. Still, time will smooth out any wrinkles", he says curtly. "Already a few years ago I said that success depends on the ability to take risks as well as chance also will effect it" Mähönen says wrinkling his brow and still pondering. "When modernism came to art a lot of people lost their perception of it and now, during post-modernism which we live, even the small existing groups of habituées have strayed to the hyper- and cybermarkets of art and popular culture. One thing has, however, amused me, and that is how some artists already for some time have been in the habit of sending invitations for their exhibitions to each other. Why on earth? Not one artist has ever bought a painting from me. Neither will I buy a painting by a colleague. I usually only go to exhibitions which I am not invited to".

Body-culture

The processing of matters and ideas are furthered for the painter and community-artist in connection with his sporting-activities or rather by them. For instance biking or hiking in different surroundings. "I used to play volleyball and badminton for quite some time, but these days I run or rough it in the Koivula cross-country surroundings". "As strange as it may sound, keeping fit is very important for me. One should accumulate one?s pension-funds and not the other way round", Mähönen quips with his typically shrewd Finnish-Carelian humour.