Tiit Pääsuke 1941 The Bow (Gives and Takes). 2011

In 2011, Tiit Pääsuke turned 70, and several solo exhibitions were held in his honor. At the opening of one of these, Pääsuke stated that he was not at all interested in the end result, but in painting as a process and the enjoyment it brought. In an interview later that year, he elaborated:

“My relationship with painting is intimate; I feel I understand it. I am in contact with most other art forms, but with painting, the connection is special. If I try to explain this rationally, in my paintings there are individual motifs, like words in a poem. But they float separately, and the viewer must connect them in their mind. In poetry, there are pauses, which are immensely important—they take you from one experience to another, and the space in between must be filled by your own mind. /…/ Of course, generalizations can be made based on generations: yes, I value harmony and beauty, which perhaps the young radicals would scoff at. /…/ I want to work with the part of painting that can no longer be described, about which one could only say: there is still something there. Words feel alien and explanations are banal. Perhaps I am mystifying things now, but this inexpressibility has helped me create. I believe in such mysticism. A painting must be looked at and felt.”