Excerpts from an interview with Tõnis Saadoja by Karin Laansoo from the upcoming biik about young Estonian artists

	How do you value these four years in the academy? Was it the right decision to study painting and not design, for example? Absolutely. /---/ I think that I'm terribly satisfied with painting. At some point, I understood that I express everything through painting. I don't know if an accountant can make this kind of discovery about himself, that he can use accounting to do everything. But when you are a creative person, then it is a good discovery that you don't have to be a musician, athlete, poet - you can be just one of them and you can use it do make everything else work. I don't remember when exactly I realized it, but it made me see that, yes, that's the way it's supposed to be. People have asked a lot if I wouldn't want to do something else. The challenge to continue painting grows bigger all the time. If you have managed to do something and done it successfully, then the responsibility grows each time - you have to surpass yourself. If you have finished something, people will expect you to do it better the next time. It is very simple to start in a new field where completely new rules apply. but, the fewer possibilities you have, the more effort you have to put into everything. I am satisfied in that sense. When sometimes I feel that maybe painting has exhausted itself for me and I should start something new, then, first of all, I couldn't imagine myself doing something else anymore. All that I want to do, I try to make it happen with painting.
	It seems that you haven't made any useless moves? I owe it to Kaido (Ole - Ed) because he taught us to make the picture first in your mind, before you start painting. It's still in me. I try to make the thing first in my mind and think it over, to decide if I need this picture. First, you should find out if anybody has done anything similar before. I imagine that if you want to introduce a new product to the market, you have to do it the same way. I have spent a lot of time thinking it over first - I have played it safe. Could you try to say what is important in art for you? It would be the easiest to say that the joy of recognition is the greatest. I've said this about all sorts of things. It is much more difficult with the things you can recognize. It has also changed a lot. once, when I was very aware of things, it was easy to say what was good and what not, what you liked and what you didn't like. The more involved you are, the more criteria you have. 'I like-don't like' type of judgment is very primitive, you see. Even if you don't like it, you have to admit if it's good or well done or better than something else. The question of aesthetics is something that can't be overlooked. Aesthetics in the simplest sense - the exterior of things. Here we shouldn't separate art from everything else we see and perceive. The things that you like in music, in other people, in art are in a sense the same type of things. For example, if you're reading a book, you can see why it is good but it doesn't work for you at all. It has a different feeling about it. The way you feel about something is most important. It sounds awfully primitive but a lot of decisions are made based on this. Especially in art, here we don't have facts. Karin Laansoo art historian; author of the upcoming book 22 Young Estonian Artists Tõnis Saadoja (1980), painter. Studied painting at the Estonian Academy of Arts (ba in 2004)
	| Estonian Art 1/05 (16) | Published by the Estonian Institute 2005 | ISSN 1406-5711 (Online) | ISSN 1406-3549 (Printed version) | einst@einst.ee | tel: (372) 631 43 55 | fax: (372) 631 43 56 |