Aimo Katajainen

I grew up along the river on a farm, so the 1950 decades environment in the countryside, timber floating, farm work and domestic animals were familiar to me. This moderately safe background is probably good for me because I find myself seeking themes and content to my work at the old, but also at the rural pre-culture before my own childhood.

In this environment, a fair amount of work was not strange for children. I recall participating in feeding animals, arable and forest work, but not in log floating, because I was too young to be employed and then the floating was already disbanded. Instead I worked in peeling the park off the logs, and for a while I was a dayworker in the field work in the neighboring farm, of which I remember even the receipt of compensation in money. Snowy winters, rural landscape, play and work can be seen in recurrent themes in my paintings.

As a teenager I did paint mainly with oil paints in surrealist style, but this hobby was forgotten for years, until when I was already in mid-forty, I became interested in naivism and I started to try painting with acrylics.

After the exhibitions in my own Summer gallery, "Upstairs" gallery in Kotka and some of Kouvola nearby held exhibitions I got, thanks to my website, an invitation to naive art exhibition in Miami, USA organized by the Museum of the Americas. This was followed by my own exhibitions in Landerneau and Brest in Brittany. Soon I became found into the annual exhibitions in Galeria Eboli and finally to a number of naive art exhibitions throughout Europe. In these exhibitions I have received several dozen friends and acquaintances of Europe's best naïve artists.