I was happy and honoured when I was invited as a guest artist to The Rural Urban Art street art festival in Estonia June 2019. My wall at the Põltsamaa Cultural Centre was beautiful and challenging. It was big; 60m2 and in a very visible place in the town. The cultural center had some wishes for the painting and I asked for more, because I wanted the work to reflect both local specialities and my own vision.

The handcrafted flowers of Põltsamaa became the main motive of the painting along the playing and dancing people, which represent the happiest parts of culture through ages, but also the activities of the cultural center.

There’s also space and rain illustrated in the painting. The endless space gives scale to all our human activities; we have only one planet and each other here. The Põltsamaa concentrate company manufactured the first space foods, which I was unaware during the sketching, but what I was thinking a lot while “flying” in the crane and painting the piece.

The rain is giving life to the living. It also represents the sad mood which can be made brighter by culture and togetherness.

The festival’s concept of bringing street art to small places is awesome. Big cities are usually saturated with art like this. In smaller places it can bring something new and shed light to the local specialities. I was happy collaborating with the local people while sketching and during the actual painting week. It is after all their home town.

The festival was very well organized: smooth, professional and communicative. The organization seemed to collaborate very well with the locals.

I felt very welcome, was able to concentrate on the painting, learned a lot and feel thankful afterwards.

https://www.facebook.com/ruralurbanart/

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