Aki Turunen: “I’d like to time-travel to Jan van Eyck’s workshop”

What is the most important thing you learned in art school?

"Making art is full of nurturing contradictions. I painted violet—and suddenly it turned yellow. You have to believe and doubt at the same time, as Susanne Gottberg told me during my very first studio visit in the early autumn of 2005."

What is the most important thing you want to teach your students?

"At school, a student should be given the nourishment they need to grow into their own artistic self. But what is that self, when it's constantly evolving? The student must explore the labyrinth—and walk down dead-end corridors for weeks on end."

Which painter’s student would you have wanted to be?

"I’d like to time-travel to Jan van Eyck’s workshop. I’m convinced that in the 15th century, time moved at a different pace than it does today. In Van Eyck’s studio, even rocks were turned over so thoroughly they became gemstones."

Which techniques are you most interested in right now?

"I'm currently drawn to egg tempera and dry pastels. Today’s large windows and artificial lighting offer a perfect stage for their matte qualities. The baroque’s muddy, resinous oil paint might be under threat."

Aki Turunen

• Painter, Master of Fine Arts
• Studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, 2005–2011
• Born in 1983
• Works in Helsinki
• Teaches second-year painting and thesis supervision at the Free Art School and evening courses in observational life drawing