I'm okay with ketti...

When I was a teenager and showed my wee gran a print of any abstract artist I liked, she would dismiss it with a snort saying "I could do that"  I would laugh but I had to be older and wiser to realise that there is nothing more complicated than simplicity.

It's knowing what to take away as much as what you leave behind. It's all about balance and harmony, texture and tone. Often what I like, is just to gaze at a print in order to feel restful. In that case I can be like the Goldilocks of abstract. There's is not enough going on in a Rothko while there is so much happening in a Miro or Kandinsky that I get agitated. I need to be somewhere in the middle. That's why Antti Kekki has been hitting the spot of late...

Kekki works as a graphic designer with the Helsinki collective GRMMXI but his personal aesthetic is less slick, and more hand-crafted, inspired as it is by old textiles, ceramics, and artists like Jockum Nordström. His work makes me think of some of the simpler Matisse papercuts. I especially love his combination of 'off colours' so beloved of Queen Michelle...

Queen Marie