Operation Ankka - This is a story about a duck. By Geoff Ballance

This first appeared in print in the Canadian Friends of Finland Spring 2020 Newsletter    

 As is often the case with duck stories, it begins on a cool, misty summer morning by a lake in Finland.  My partner Christina and I had been staying at her cousin Tapani's kesämöki, exploring the lake and surrounding countryside.  Perched at the end of a small peninsula, the cottage is situated in the ideal location to enjoy the unavoidable peace and tranquility of rural eastern Finland.  But alas, our time here had come to an end.  It was time to head back to Canada.

I grabbed our bags, threw on my jacket and stepped outside. The faded wooden deck was slowly being painted a polka-dot motif as light rain began to fall. I filled my lungs with cool pine-scented air that crept up from the lake and across the moss-covered forest floor. 

More comments on Hugo Simberg

As I was born and brought up in Finland, Hugo Simberg and some of his work is familiar to me; who wouldn't even in those days have recognized at least Haavoittunut enkeli (The Wounded Angel)? It was painted in 1903 and remained nameless in its first exhibition catalogue as the artist did not want to influence the reception and interpretation of the symbolism of this work which he painted after a long, difficult recovery from meningitis.

As recently as 2006, Haavoittunut enkeli was chosen by popular vote as Maamme Taulu (The National Painting) of Finland and it has also inspired several music videos such as Amaranth, a 2007 music video for the popular Finnish band Nightwish.

Other highly distinctive works that come to mind are Kuoleman puutarhassa (The Garden of Death) and Halla (The Frost) and Piruparka kaksosineen ( Poor Devil with his Twins). Here again Simberg did not simply illustrate some stories, but by personifying death, frost and devil, he created recognizable symbols of unconscious good and evil but enlivened his serious symbolism with macabre humour. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why his images have such a staying power with the viewer.

Leena commenting on Chris' notes about Hugo Simberg and his work Tonttukuningas nukkuu (King Hobgoblin Sleeping)

Leena

Hugo Simberg - discovering Finnish artists

This morning I'm writing a note of condolences to a friend who lost her father. The visual image on the front of the card is King Hobgoblin Sleeping 1896 - Tonttukuninga Nukkuu. The card has a haunting quality to it - a tonttu covered in a white shroud with a rodent curled around his head, his cap and other pieces off to the side. In the background are hundreds, if not thousands of smaller tonttus (can I say that since I don't know the plural of tonttu) most of their heads resting on their chests expect for a few whose beards you can glimpse. I do not know the story behind the card but it is haunting.

Hugo Simberg 1873-1917 has a spooky eerie quality to his work. When I looked it up I find that "symbolism is a 19th-century movement in which art became infused with exaggerated sensitivity and a spooky mysticism. It was a continuation of the Romantic tradition..... the Symbolists mined mythology and dream imagery for a visual language of the soul. More a philosophical approach than an actual style of art, they influenced their contemporaries in the Art Nouveau movement and Les Nabis."

Much of his work reminds me of the boogie man my grandparents told me lived in the closet. And much of his work reminds me of our darker selves that surface every now and then. This site has several links where you can explore this artist further. http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/simberg_hugo.html