Introduction
A new aspect, change in his art
Our story
In 2023
Introduction
Rainer Armiala 1947 – 2020
The paintings of Rainer Armiala are paintings with a shade of mystic, pictures with hidden meanings, spiritual aspects, some message. They are pictures of goodness and beauty, they bring hope and trust. He painted also some playful paintings and some critical pictures.
In his art powers of harmony and peace can be experienced.
Rainer Armiala’s career as an artist began in a very unusual way.
”I became an artist by the guidance of fate. I had never thought a career as an artist though I had drawn my whole life; it just didn’t seem real work.
Some people might say that I became an artist by chance – but it is not so, it was the guidance of Karma.
It was some time at the 1970s when I was at an exhibition at the museum of Walter Runeberg in Porvoo.
I stood watching a painting when I – quite suddenly – began to feel that I also could paint. It felt familiar. Something moved inside me, in my soul.
That was the beginning.
When I stood there studying the picture, a woman – it appeared later that she was the director of the museum – came to watch the same painting. We started to talk and she asked what did I think about it. I told her what I saw and what I thought of the painting.
She was very much interested in my way to experiece art, it was different from what people usually saw in paintings.
I told her that I felt that I also could paint.
Our conversation led up to that she arranged me a meeting with a professor of art she knew – Åke Hellman – to watch him working.
Professor Hellman was painting a portrait of a girl and told me what he was doing.
I spent with him one morning.
While listening to him and watching his painting a memory woke in me: just like that, I remember now, I have done that some time, somewhere!
Little by little more and more came into my mind. I knew I had painted myself. I did remember.
The director of the museum I had met arranged me to paint a picture to an acquaintance of hers. I don’t know how she could trust my ability but when I had painted one picture and went to show it to her, she asked if I would paint a motif of sea to a Swedish professor she knew.
It was an easy piece of work and I enjoyed painting it.
I liked to paint nature but made also portraits. I tried Indian ink-drawing and water colors but found soon that oil colors suited me best.”
***
A new aspect, a change in his art
In Rainer Armiala`s art one can feel powers of harmony and peace.
At the end of 1990’s – when he was having a very hard time – he got an essentially important guidance to his artistic work.
He had gone to the peace of the churchyard near where he was living and there he had been guided to a memorial.
”There was a sculpture of a young woman leaning against a cross. Her grief was immense, her posture absolutely magnificent, really very impressive in it’s beauty – but desperately sad. She leans against the cross but doesn’t trust it, the meaning of it. To her it is the symbol of death, not Christ. The cross also is heavy, earthly, pulling to the earth.”
While looking at the sculpture I heard a voice at my right side saying:
’Look attentively, listen to your heart and you’ll understand what is not right in this. You are meant to make pictures, paintings that are governed by the life force, faith to the future; search for beauty in everything, make peace in your own way – that all is in you already.
And remember: Delight and happiness are not sin. If you’d make this sculpture wouldn’t you lift her face up so that she looks at the high and not down to the earth – to grief. So it will be and it is.’
That’s how it happened.”
Our story
Rainer and I wanted that Rainer’s artistic work – over 40 paintings and some sculptures – would be kept together as a collection. We had been looking for a suitable place, a small gallery when Rainer at the beginning of summer 2020 became ill and moved to the spiritual world at the end of the summer.
There I was in the middle of my husband’s art and my life had to be organised totally to a new direction.
After all, the things began to arrange by fate and I got a new home in Kangasala in the beginning of 2021 and knew no one there. It took a lot of work to get all my affairs settled and still at the beginning of 2022 there was some things unfinished. I had no idea what was ahead.
However, things had already moved on by the guidance of fate.
In the spring 2021 I had heard from a friend of my daughter’s of the exhibitions of the Walleniuksen Wapriikki. I had sent an email and some pictures of Rainer’s paintings but got no answer.
At the end of the year 2021 our friends and I thought about the situation and decided that the first thing to do, was to get the rest of the paintings framed and then photographed. While I had no strength to start it, our friends – who lived near by Seinäjoki – found Liljala Oy in Seinäjoki to frame the pictures. It’s a bit odd but it was easier for me to take ten paintings at a time to them and decide together what kind of frames to choose than find a framer from nearby.
Then our friends took those paintings to a photographer they had found.
In January 2022 I got a message from Walleniuksen Wapriikki that there was time for applications for an exhibition until to the end of January. We applied an exhibition for July.
There were still about 20 paintings to be framed. My friend had asked the framer if she knew any place for an exhibition and she offered a window exhibition in her shop-windows. We decided our very first exhibition to take place in April. It was easy because the paintings were already there.
While choosing frames we told the framer about our plans and she mentioned that her friend was working in a place they had people with mental problems and that they would like to have art there. We were a bit doubtful about the safety of the paintings in such a place.
Finally during the spring I had the sculptures and the rest of the paintings photographed at my home.
Then on Easter Sunday came a message telling that my application was accepted but the time would be
27.4 – 22.5.2022. There was only a week and a couple of days time and some of the paintings announced to that exhibition were in the window-exhibition in Seinäjoki.
Anyway, I had to take some more pictures to be framed and so I could bring the other paintings for the Walleniuksen Wapriikki exhibition.
We organized Rainer Armiala’s ”Spirituality and humour-exhibition” at Walleniuksen Wapriikki on 26.4.2022.
While looking for other places to get Rainer’s art to public, I thought about what the framer Pauliina had told. In Kangasala there was two public places and some in the aged people’s group homes.
I phoned Jalmarin Koto, visited there and arranged a small exhibition until September and after that to other similar places.
During the summer I had visited Art Villa Armas gallery in Kangasala and told the owner about Rainer’s art. She wanted to come and see his art.
The result was the last exhibition of 2022 Art Villa Armas-gallery 6.11 – 4.12.2022. It was a Rainer Armiala im memoriam exhibition. That’s why I drove to Ilmajoki to borrow a wooden sculpture ”The Mistress of Mysteries” from the owner who kindly lent it to me. It is a prototype of the bronze ”The Mistress of Mysteries” which is very heavy to transport.
Irmeli Armiala
In 2023
An exhibition in Riku’s group homes 6.3.2023 – January 2024
In February I was granted an award by The Björkquist Foundation of the town of Kangasala.
During the spring we created a Virtual Exhibition to the cultural pages of Kangasala and it was there from the beginning of May to December.
At the same time we designed an Art Calendar 2024 – 2027 of Rainer’s art. It was ready at the end of November.