Meet Erik Nieminen | Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Erik Nieminen and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Erik, we’d love to hear more about your end-goal, professionally.
I hope my work makes a difference to the world on an individual level. I harbor no illusions about change on a grand level – I don’t think that visual art works like that most of the time. I am not looking to make a social or political point with this work. All good art is political. For instance, making a painting – in a time of mass reproduction – is a political, social act. It affirms the significance of the belief that art can change the world – not through immediate revelation but through a slow process of understanding – like a vine crawling up the side of a building. This tends to happen on a personal level. Therefore, I hope that my work can be seen by as many as possible, such that it may resonate with some who feel that there’s a reflection of their own experiences, dreams, or ambitions in my work. Or maybe they just like how it looks, and that’s fine too!

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I spend my time creating alternate realities in paint. These are psychological spaces that we inhabit through the act of looking – I want the viewer of my work to cross that metaphorical bridge and live in this new world. But, my activities around making the paintings are not as simple as that. Ask almost any artist, and they will tell you they’ve been rejected and failed much more than they have succeeded. This means both inside of the studio and in terms of career opportunities. There’s a complete oversaturation of artists and not nearly enough of the framework needed to show even all the good ones. The key is to take rejection and turn it into a positive. Without that, you will stall, and you will fail. I used to get down about something not working out. Now, I appreciate success when it happens because I’ve learned not to take rejection personally and to turn it into a learning opportunity. It’s best to say “good” when something doesn’t work out, as you can present something better or different in the future.
If there’s a description to be made about a career as an artist, somewhere in that text would have to be written “risk”. There’s no guarantee of success as an artist, and only 1% at most manage to survive strictly off their artistic lifestyle. So, risk on that level is quite broad, an all-encompassing globe that extends to all aspects of what I do. It’s always there as a sort of pseudo-existential envelope.
Nevertheless, I also seek risk as an artist. I am continually looking to evolve my work, not satisfied with working in a formula or cliché. Once something starts to feel like I have all the answers, I need to change the syntax, change the questions, the process, etc. There’s nothing wrong, of course, in an art life that follows a mostly singular direction for the duration of a career, but I don’t have the temperament for it. A great impetus for my spending my time painting is to discover things I didn’t know about the world around me and about myself. Risk and discovery go hand-in-hand.
I want the world to know me as an artist who provides others with hope and possibilities, to understand more about their lives through the story of looking at a painting.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I was brainwashed early, so to speak. My father is an artist, as is my uncle. There are other artists in the family going back a few generations. Growing up in Ottawa, we would make weekly visits to the National Gallery. I didn’t see being an artist as an exotic career choice; for that matter, I didn’t even think of it as a traditional “career,” per se. It was just part of life. As cliche as it may be, I have my parents to thank for that.

Website: www.eriknieminen.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eriknart/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/erik.nieminen