STUDENTS AND TEACHERS

I remember I always liked paintings. Not that I was often taken to museums as a child, but I liked the poster-reproductions that mother had a collection of from a Soviet magazine "Ogonjok". I would sit and look at them for hours in the green armchair at grandmother's place. I would then enter through imaginary windows into the gardens, forests, fields; travel on the roads, climb mountains; I would go far beyond what the Russian masters had once painted into some other worlds of my own.

Hanging on the wall in our apartment mother had a few oil paintings she had done in her art class - several portraits, amongst them a portrait of father, some marine paintings and Tallinn old-town views. When no-one was looking, I sometimes went to touch those works - to check if the "windows" were open. They never were and I had to continue imagining. These were my first actual art experiences I can recall.

In a more mature age when I started purchasing my own art-books to continue with my favourite hobby of art viewing, I became fascinated with Estonian hyper-realism of late 70s and early 80s. Especially with the works of Tiit Pääsuke whose "Landscape with a car" (1976), "Boy with a violin" (1980), "People V" (1975) and other paintings introduced me to a completely new level of an art experience. At the age of sixteen I came to admire the contexts, colours and even smells and sounds of an art piece. Tiit Pääsuke had in a way become my idol, whose palette I would try to resemble in my own painting practices.

In the world of music a musician can dream of a "jam session" with a favourite artist. In the world of painting a student-teacher acquaintance comes to mind. But I was rejected a chance to study at the Art Academy after finishing my art school on a gymnasium level. Having done my Master's degree in Cultural Management at the Academy of Theatre an Music, I continued in the field of museum education. The books and posters I had once taken so much pleasure to explore, developed into real paintings on the museum walls. Instead of just guiding myself into what I still found so fascinating, I could take along the many young visitors to the museum. In five years I witnessed many who stayed in my art classes grow up to remind me of myself as a child. With the only difference that they did not experience art viewing posters in a grandmother's armchair, but seeing the real paintings.

This Saturday I said good-bye to Astra, Elisa, Laura, Kärt, Anna, Sarah Marta, Maria, Liisa, Lilly and their families, in my mind to many more - my first students, also my teachers. My greatest farewell present was the artist Tiit Pääsuke - the inspiration of my youth. A week ago he had answered my phone call invitation with a willful "yes".

An annual event of a "Painting Saturday" with hundreds of citizens coming to paint the Kadriorg park and the Palace was then done under his professional guidance. For a moment there I thought that I was having a "jam session" with my guru and idol. I also felt that behind the artist I once got to know through his paintings, I received a chance to meet a great human being, a good listener, a good teacher. That day I became a richer person.