1999 Self-portrait, 61x44 cm, oils

I wish I met someone who speaks the truth just for one minute.
Erno Paasilinna. (Ruumisarkun nauloja. Otava 1999)                 

Ruumisarkun nauloja is a collection of aphorisms that was published in 1999. The same year I painted this self-portrait. Erno had lost his faith in the honesty of people, if he ever had had any. He was at odds with the world. He called newspaper editors publicly shitlickers and was almost taken to court for defamation. "Look for an honest person and you will find poor men". In one of his last TV appearances, Paasilinna compared man with the rat. Both of them populate the earth with equal persistence, destroying everything they come across with. They rush in herds to everything new. The fate of the poor did not leave him in peace. "The coffin is here the first abode of many a poor man." This is the sentence that closed "The homepage of the poor" in Erno's book of aphorisms.

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