Yesterday I decided to jump on a tram and go spend an hour in the museum of Art Ateneum with the current exhibit: about Tove Jansson.

I discovered Tove Jansson’s work only recently, with her famous books of the Moomins.
I fell in love with the simplicity and the wisdom of those books.

I escaped the rain outside and I entered a world so rich and so warm it was hard to leave it anymore.

The art of Tove Janson went beyond the Moomins.
She was a painter, a writer, a caricaturist during World War II.

While our “leaders” were conducting millions of lives to war,
she gave people colours through her paintings and a space to think via her satiric illustrations for the magazine Garm .
Some people in this world give Cold, others give Warmth.

As I looked at her many self-portraits I thought this woman was looking for answers to the mysteries inside her, and to the mysteries of this world. When she found answers she offered them to people.

She did it  with an emotional intelligence that was both fresh and deep..
As if inside the woman lived both a child and an old woman.

There was a video of her.
No sound.
Just her, dancing, full of life on top of a hill on her island in southern Finland.

It made me feel emotional, like on every rare occasions I witness or meet an angel.

I came out of the museum feeling a strong respect for Tove Jansson.

Like I always have, for artists who manage to explore this world and to make it a better place.

I felt a pinch in my heart when I thought she was dead.

Warm / Cold.