Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Nina Haiko. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Nina, we are so happy that our community is going to have a chance to learn more about you, your story and hopefully even take in some of the lessons you’ve learned along the way. Let’s start with self-care – what do you do for self-care and has it had any impact on your effectiveness?
I feel painting is a powerful way for self-care and well-being for the mind. Whatever happens in life, I can paint it all out of my system. That being said, this habit of painting or sketching everything that happens, amounts to a large amount of images, and they inspire new work quite a lot and at the same time it’s also nurturing because you process everything that’s going on. I consider my visual diary a form of self-care and also effective as it inspires new work. It has made me appreciate my everyday life more and the perspective that everywhere I look, there are subjects of interest, has added to my feelings of abundance on a daily basis. That’s very motivating, and the motivation can be found in each day over and over again.
Right now I’m learning to better take care of my physical instrument, my body. I have to pay attention to this, as I enjoy painting and diving into my imaginary world so much, I’m often in such a state of flow that I don’t notice the time, and forget about my physical side. Our cold and long Nordic winters add to the physical challenge. I have to remind myself to, during my work day, to come out of my creative bubble every now and then and to be present in the real world to stretch my body often enough. I am now scheduling my days ahead with regular breaks so that I don’t skip the physical side no matter how excited I am about what I’m painting. It’s also a healthy balance to keep in mind that physical health is the basis for everything else.
I’ve done Pilates for a decade, yoga on and off for two decades, and we walk a lot with our sweet dog each day, she’s the best personal trainer. Now I’m into yin yoga and my aim is to jog more. I’m also interested in eating relatively healthy. I like to think this will all help my effectiveness in the long run, and I’m constantly learning how to best maintain balance in life. I think of effectiveness with a longer perspective of decades these days, and sustaining a level of effectiveness through the years.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I’m an artist, illustrator and pattern designer living my creative dream in Finland with my spouse and my dog. I paint original art for people’s homes, and my work has been used in fairytale books, magazines and greeting cards. My latest creative crush is pattern design for fabric, home decor, wallpaper and such. I’ve had the joy of participating happy family events through my art, painting for special occasions like name giving celebrations to children, big birthdays and new homes, and that’s so special.
Most exciting about what I do, is perhaps the people I get to meet through my work. It still blows my mind how what I paint, brings people into my life.
I’ve worked for causes important to me, such as child’s rights, nature and animal rights, and collaborated with publishing houses, magazines, theatres, puppet theatres, The Federation of Mother and child homes and shelters, for children’s mental health and against domestic violence. I’m very interested in the ways that art and creating can add to wellbeing, it’s a huge asset and an awesome way to make small positive changes.
I’m always looking for new collaborations, I’d love to get my art on a home decor line, wallpaper and fabric, and I have a couple of fairytales in English in my drawer I’d love to get published. All sorts of new collaborations inspire me.
My creative work has brought some of the best people in my life. I’m so grateful for that. Art and illustration do not exist in a vacuum, they need to be seen and they need the interaction between people. I believe the energy in my work attracts the right people for me. People see images through their own experiences, but there’s often something that comes through that combines us and makes us like-minded, and pulls us together. Painting is like sending messages into the world and it’s a joy when people answer.
My subjects are often imaginary home views, views through the window, places that have felt special to me presented with fairytale charm to detach recognizable places from reality, the things we see on our dog walks in the nature like animals, flowers, birds on tree branches, daily observations and some surprises. I love colour, texture and pattern and the story in the paintings opens through the details. The viewer might see the story different from how I feel it and that only adds to it, I love that. My main aim is to convey strong emotion.
I often paint to bring comfort and hope, to myself and others, like in these guardian figures I do. They started as a response to grief after my friend passed away, with the thought that love remains. As I continued with them, they became messengers of love and these gentle figures for those days when you just need something extra to soothe the way and to get that feeling of nurture for yourself. People see so many different things in them. They can be a way to change losses and setbacks into something else, or manifesting a dream, something soothing, affirming and consoling, and some of them are only about spreading love.
I am inspired by many things, and my observations can end up being combined with the mood in theatre or things I read or any exotic detail that catches my attention and awakes something in my mind. For commission work especially, the subjects can vary a lot, and some of it takes me to new places and leads to new work and new interests. It all becomes a creative path that keeps getting wider.
At the moment I’m working for some private commissions, preparing for my next exhibitions, and looking for a publisher for a fairytale book in English I’ve done with a puppet theatre professional on scriptwriting and directing Oili Sadeoja, and hoping to work on some new projects too soon.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Persistency – There are many ups and downs and sometimes it might seem silly, even irrational, to keep going but that’s where persistency appears. In Finnish we call this “sisu”.
Love of colour keeps me exploring and gives me energy. I never get bored of trying different colour combinations and seeing what emotions they convey and how they feel like.
Imagination and trusting your imagination – this is not easy, being brave enough to live a life that suits your dreams and might not go well with what others around you or the society expects you to do. Trusting your intuition takes practice. Imagination is a huge asset and it can work for your benefit in many ways. You can make a living with it and you can make life pretty special with it.
My advice is to follow your inner gut feeling and learn to trust it as your guiding light.
All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?
I’ve had some challenges with home studios lately.
Drawing and painting have been, from ever since I was a kid, something I naturally turn to when i’m having a hard time or difficulties. Whatever happens, I have an outlet and a way to always make myself feel better with painting and drawing.
In February 2020 for instance, our home became inhabitable for us due to an exterior renovation of the building, leaving us with only two weeks of time to empty our home, to find a new one somewhere and move into it. We loved our old home and used to joke about living there for the rest of our lives. We thought how could we make the most of this turn of events, and how do we turn the loss into a new possibility, how do we make the awful into something wonderful. We ended up taking a leap of faith and moved to the other side of the country to Turku, to get the experience of living in a completely new place, and decided to give it a year and see how we like it. All we could get in that short time, was a small room with hardly any kitchen at all. We thought we’ll be out in the city most of the time enjoying everything new it has to offer, and could find another apartment soon to move into, so we’d only be sleeping in there, but as we were carrying our moving boxes, there was news on the radio how the pandemic entered Finland and everything will be closed for public safety. And then apartments did not become available and we were stuck in the room all of the time with way too little space and trying to keep working like nothing has happened, as the news were about if people are allowed to still walk their dogs outdoors or not.
This was a clear turning point in my work. I started drawing and painting our new surroundings, drawing myself and my dog and where we walked, to sort of see this new place becoming a part of our story and our story becoming a part of the city. Earlier on, I would almost never use my own life as inspiration, and landscapes in particular were something that would frighten me, and I had nothing to say about them to paint them. This shift of inspiration actually lead to finding a whole new area of work that became quite essential part of what I do and a whole new group of people who loved the landscapes and the urban sketches especially and selling them as paintings to homes. The local rather large newspaper wrote an article of the landscapes I had made and it was printed in the cover of culture section full-size, and it started this whole new interest towards my work which is amazing. The timing was also special, as we moved to Turku at the beginning of the pandemic, and especially in the beginning, the streets were quite empty when we got to know our surroundings and that gave the pictures I painted, a weirdly enchanting mood, a bit mysterious. And that’s what it felt like too!
At this point, I saw how imagination is an asset that can turn negative into positive. Also the meaning of home became huge through this experience, when you’re suddenly entering a global pandemic and just had to let go of your home and painting studio at the same time and lingering in a temporary challenging apartment. This led me to paint imaginary home views and safe harbours as a way to keep dreaming, and painting my dream homes was a way I could give myself and our small family all the homes I could literally think of, any location or window view I would like to have, I would paint it and we’d have them all, sort of. It was a bit like when you’re travelling somewhere and imagine what would it be like to live with that daily view or in that home, I just paint it.
A couple of moves later, we’re still home hunting for the perfectly unperfect more permanent home with a painting studio in Turku region. We found something very inspiring and magical even, in here, and now understand so well why it is called the Paris of Finland – they have a saying here “Why Paris when we have Turku”, and we’re definitely under it’s enchanting spell. This would have never happened I guess, if we would have stayed in our old comfortable home through the pandemic. Now it feels we got to experience so much more.
The very best bit for me personally is, that my visual diary started a shift in my mind where now I see subjects and beauty or at least inspiration everywhere i look, and so everyday ordinary life has become more special and precious and a source of abundance – subject ideas flow naturally to me and that’s beautiful to experience. It’s motivating and empowering. Earlier on I used to squeeze the ideas from somewhere that had nothing or almost nothing to do with my daily personal life. I still do that too, I still keep painting a line of work that isn’t inspired by my own life directly, like I used to do. I’m exploring both approaches and seeing where it takes me next. Having variety keeps things fresh.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ninahaiko.com/
- Instagram for paintings and my visual diary: https://www.instagram.com/nina.haiko/
- Instagram for illustration and pattern design: https://www.instagram.com/illustration.nina.haiko/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nina-haiko-0a737873/
Image Credits
Artist photo by Mikko Laakso Other images photographied and scanned by Nina Haiko
