Tiina Jääskeläinen-Alasaari, born in
1962 and also known by her former surname Hattunen, is a visual
artist and writer living in Turku, Finland. Her works are often based
on images originating from music, which form through different
processes and combine with emotions. Her totem animal, the giraffe,
crept into her pictorial world already in the 1980s. The same decade
witnessed the emergency of chairs into her art, depicting the
controversy between the human being and the norms of society.
Her own experiences processed into
drawings and poems (Deadly Love, 1998) which she used during
1998-2002 as material for her series of lectures nationwide. She was
frequently invited by the Finnish National Research and Development
Center for Welfare and Health to lecture to professionals who help
victims of domestic violence.
She was one of the new promising
writers in Reviiri 2000, a poetry and prose anthology published by
the Regional Art Council of South-West Finland. Her short story
“Night Guests” was received with praise. The following year her
poem ”A Prayer” was published in the North American poetry
magazine ICE FLOE, Winter Solstice Issue, 2001.
In 2007 the international jury of the
Biennale dell’Arte Contemporanea di Firenze invited her to
Florence, Italy. The following year she organized an exhibition with
her goddaughter, art student Vilma Puputti, then 11 years, in which
they displayed a wonderful visual dialogue of two females of
different ages.
Recently she has challenged herself
with the art of portraits: ”For me, portraits are the most
difficult form of art. It is also something that I have always wanted
to do. More I know the person more difficult it is because someone
familiar has too many faces and sometimes it is impossible to catch
the core of the personality. I find selfies in social media an
interesting glimpse inside other people's inner world. Selfies tell
me something about how the person sees him/herself. The portraits I
paint are my interpretation of their interpretation of themselves. ”
She writes short stories and prose as
well as articles and columns. She also paints silk, icons and
exlibris art. Artistic family background, early discovered
synaesthesia, studies in cultural history, literature, art and
philosophy all create a basis for her existence in which art in all
its forms is as necessary as oxygen. ‘I see words in pictures, hear
pictures as music and associate music with colours, which constitute
atmospheres… Creation is a process of comprehensive observation of
the world, its filtering through one’s own identity. If I can touch
something universal by my paintings and texts, become understood and
transmit my perceptions, I have reached my goals.’