We were lucky to catch up with Nina Haiko recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Nina, thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

I’ve worked for causes important to me, such as child’s rights, nature and animal rights, Women and Children’s 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.

One of the most meaningful projects I’ve worked on, is a painting series for Safe Homes and Shelters for Mothers and Children. The paintings will go to 45 Safe Homes and Shelters, and they are aimed especially to the children who have had to face insecure situations and violence, most often within their family. The paintings will work as a tool in children’s art therapy. It is so meaningful to see your art can make small positive changes in someone’s life, that may carry a lot of weight for that one person, and to help bring back some of the trust to life, people, and the community.

Nina, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am an artist, illustrator and pattern designer living my creative dream in Finland. I paint original art for people’s homes, and illustrations for fairytales, magazines and greeting cards. My latest creative crush is pattern design for fabric, home decor, wallpaper and such.

I paint mysterious, dream-like magic. I have a strong texture and handmade quality in my work. I’ve always been fascinated by folktales, mythology, symbolism in different cultures, nature and the magic of fairytales as inspiration, and that shows in my paintings. My interest to these things lead me to study Visual Art, Visual Communication and Fine Art. I have been awarded with Acknowledgement Award and Young Visual Artist of the Year, and my work has been invited to numerous international exhibitions, triennials and biennials. I’ve been blessed to receive artist grants every now and then during several years, and I’m so happy to just have found out I’ll be having one for six months in 2025.

I’ve worked for causes important to me, such as child’s rights, nature and animal rights, for children’s mental health and against domestic violence, and collaborated with publishing houses, magazines, theatres, puppet theatres and Shelters for Women and Children. I’m very interested in the ways that art and creating can add to wellbeing.

I love colour, and conveying emotions and moods through different color combinations. Starting from about 2020, my subjects have been more and more about my own daily life and combining the everyday details and my own experiences with fairytale magic. I paint home views, views through the window, places where I walk with my dog, and a line of Guardian figures. The Guardians are messengers of love, gentle figures for those days when you just need something extra to soothe the way. People see many different things in them. They can be a way to change losses and setbacks into something else, something soothing, affirming and consoling, and sometimes just spreading love.

At the moment we live near beautiful forest paths and the sound of the waves. I take as much advantage of it as I can and do my work sitting on the cliffs whenever the temperature allows it – in Finland this means somewhere around from three to max five months of the year. Listening to the sound of the waves, things flow effortlessly and I find solutions for things with more ease.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

In 2020, our home suddenly became inhabitable for us with a few week’s notice due to an exterior renovation right at the same time as the pandemic started in Finland. It was such an exceptional time, and many of us will carry stories about it for a long time, and this is mine. We ended up moving to the other side of the country to change what was a terrible experience, being suddenly without both a home and studio, into a wonderful new beginning and possibility.

We had a rocky start and a challenging tiny room at first, and painting became an important get-away. I was determined to continue and to find a better new space. The change of scenery immediately appeared in my work: I started painting imaginary home views, views through the window I would dream we would one day have as we were searching for a more permanent place, places that felt special to me in our new surroundings. They were often places we would go walking with my dog. Painting the places was a way to understand where we were and to see our story becoming a part of the new landscapes around us and the landscape becoming a part of our story.

The timing of our move 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 out of this world. And that’s what it felt like too!

It was a beautiful thing to experience, that I was so warmly welcomed to both Turku and Naantali, and these landscape sketches and paintings brought a whole new group of people to my work. I got to know people through being curious of the landscapes, and started feeling at home. In the end, the moving was probably even necessary for me to continue as a creative, the new surroundings started wonderful new things. Painting is like sending messages into the world and it’s a joy when people answer.

The very best bit for me personally is, that adding this new subject to my work, the landscapes and window views and homes and keeping a visual diary, started a shift in my mind where now I see subjects and inspiration everywhere I look, and so everyday ordinary life has become more precious and a source of abundance. It’s motivating and empowering, in a way I started to see the fairytale magic in my own daily life. It became an essential part of what I now do. I still keep painting a line of work that isn’t inspired by my own life directly and can be inspired by theatre or things I read or some exotic quirky details that just catch my attention, too. I think we are always changing, morphing and as for my own work, I believe the things that move and change us, should be allowed to enter to the paintings – it’s only natural that they become layers of our expression.

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 – I love my art being a part of the happy news!

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

We’re often raised to neglect our inner intuition and gut feeling and to replace it with things like reasoning and calculation and even emphasising the importance of pleasing others, at the cost of loosing the ability to hear your own inner voice, and this is believed to bring a level of security in your life. Painting can be a wonderful way to get in touch again with your inner gut feeling and to trust that as your guiding light – it can lead you to a way of life that serves you and those around you, much better than reasoning, calculation and people pleasing. I just read somewhere a quote that said The safe paths are no longer safe, so its’s time to start creating, and I so agree!!! The world is changing, and what was once a safe route to a secured life, might no longer be so. So why not go all in and do what your heart most desires?

Securing your own creative energy so that you keep creating and do your best work, is far more important than listening to each and every opinion of what others think about what you paint. Comments that you don’t ask for, if you get a lot of them, can really take the wind off your sails the way you become paralyzed and stop. There are always going to be people who like what you do and always people that don’t like it, and mostly people just enjoy expressing their own opinion. If you find your flock of people who do support you with kindness and you share equal respect, these are the people to really hold on to. Painting has brought some of the best people into my life. In all areas of life, choose people who choose you is an excellent advice, I think it’s much better than trying to be everyone’s cup of tea. You can build a genuinely supportive community with the right people. So be selective of who you listen to.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ninahaiko.com
• Instagram: Instagram account for sketches and paintings inspired by daily life :https://www.instagram.com/nina.haiko/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nina-haiko-0a737873/
• Other: Instagram account for editorial illustration and pattern design: https://www.instagram.com/illustration.nina.haiko/

  Cara:
  https://cara.app/ninahaiko

Image Credits

Photography for artist portraits by Mikko Laakso
Photography or scanning of artwork by Nina Haiko

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