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Why Abstract? What is this anyway?
 
Through Adyashanti, I heard what Krishnamurti once said: the child will never see a bird again after you say it's a bird. He looks at it as it was just a bird instead of seeing what the bird actually is. To me it seems, we as humanity have seen and been trying to understand and control everything hard enough to stop seeing the things for what they really are and also limiting their possibilities for what we think they are for.
 
Abstract art makes you question and wonder. Often, you see more than you would have expected and day by day, you start discovering even more. It is the art for wanderers. I don't want people to look for certain, but to accept the neverending change within and without; and never stop wondering. To be amazed and live in the now that is always anew.
 
You can capture that important look, the strength, the power and magic also in the works of old masters that knew how to forward it perfectly (with hard work!) also in figurative way, but as times are changing and we as humanity are developing our skills - every knowledge becomes greater as we dig deeper and are able to see the smallest parts, to me it seems, that abstract art captures best what energy really is.
 
A fluid of non-certain form. A feeling. A pre-seeing. A knowing of the moment. And on the luckiest of them, a climps of eternity, and what is really important.
 
Well, in my works, I use the seemingly non-important as it were important as in life, you never know what small thing pushes you to the giant's shoulders. The grandest of moments are often the result of unexpected circumstances. So one needs some luck. Also in painting.
 
But it can be a small or it could be a big thing that I see, in landscape, in a person, in a larger crowd or plants - I never question the importance, as all that is of influence. If one only directs the attention appropriately, it is always possible to bring out the best. Even if the work gets muddy, what would a village do without soil? You need that also in the painting, just as you need sunshine.
 
Thinking that one thing is worse than the other is really an illusion. 

II

It's a matter of taste and matters of taste are not to be discussed, unless something is so obviously good that if one would say the opposite, he would really have to be stupid. I'm not afraid of the words, I am an artist, and I can choose my world to be just as straightforward as I like. Honesty is the key to making good art. Even if I don't like the painting that is composed perfectly well and everything is seemingly in harmony, the intuition has the final say. If I really don't like it, I destroy it. No questions asked. Just a feeling. 
 
Even if I don't physically burn it, cut it to pieces, I can cover it with better layers. Just as life. One cannot always undo the past, but you can change the here and now. So the past becomes a really good soil and you already have the seeds.
 
The blossoming is therefor closer than it could have been any other way. 
 
III
 
Artist Liis Koger, Estonian, abstract art, modern art, abstract painter, painter, portrait
Liis Koger. February 2018. Photographer Jake Farra (here and everywhere on this page)
 
Or as the Chinese say, the best time to plant the tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. As an artist, it is a must to do whatever you want and have the tremendous force coming to take you over for things coming through you, now. There is no other time for the same thing. The real content of this fact is the best teacher. There is no time like now. There is an other teacher though, that makes you understand, if there is no universal force trying to manifest through you, you make it happen, however you feel. This is called discipline. 
 
If you don't have it, you become too much alike random bohemian to make a happy life. 
 
IV 
 
Nor can you be in service of others. Every work comes with its own tasks and necessities. Every work needs to be done. For an artist that I am, I need to be a good person first. No, not in the pink bubbly modern era public esoterica's compassionate-to-all-terrible-beings-type of good, but understanding all sides and definitely having the priorities right. I am a mother, so it is really important to make time and take care of the future that continues through me in human genes. 
 
But I have my own mission and I make a lot of time also for that. 
 
The force in this work is huge. When the trance is on, the power that moves my hand and the knowledge that makes the decision in the analytics state is often the same that carries whichever wonderer. 
 
No decision can be made 100% correctly all the time. 
Everything is going through change. 
 
V
 
Until you feel the click. Then I know the painting is ready. 
Until it happens again. The click of need for change. 
And then it's ready, again. 
 
Liis Koger. February 2018. Photographer Jake Farra
 
Training
 
Like the development of a child, it is really hard to say when and where everything actually begins. Many lifetimes and many eons ago? I am totally in the state of neverending development. I can see that I feel things better, sooner and more precise compared to what was, but the history gave the best lessons it could and it is more like changing glasses than becoming smarter. Becoming smarter always carries the shady possibility of losing sharpness in some other field of life. It requires a huge growth in energy to actually become larger in many fields without losses, and some losses are always necessary, but they do can be just the "bad things".
 
That is energetically speaking, as everything is energy.
Not all energy carries pure force.

II
 
I went to University of Tartu and received my bachelor's degree in Painting, Fine Arts. Before, I had entered into the department of Psychology, but after half a year of studying, I felt it was too much theory. I wanted to put my hands on and start doing something - feel how I can change the world for what I could feel it to be through my huge curiousity towards many things that I am interested in, and what I regained. Knowledge. Insight.
 
Painting felt like being more practical than Psychology. 
 
Painting was my major field of study, and I took Theology as minor; I studied them both seriously, and graduated with a degree. 
 
Past And Future Mixed In The Now

I am a very literary person. I have written three poetry books, though I have raw material for many more to come. I am a perfectionist, so it takes too much time. Probably it is not my purpose in life at the moment to publish poetry.
 
Curiousity takes me to what can be done with art in a person's world. I don't want to call it art therapy, though I am interested in the results of the studies. I would keep an eye on them, but rather learn the effects of colours and forms from all sources available, ancient philosophy and modern science. That enriches the practice.
 
I am sure the art of Rembrandt and Pollock can be healing just the same, and it is because of the whole focus given. And so the works that don't have it, can have the opposite effect. You really have to be careful. There is a huge difference between trying to solve one's depression with putting it into art and trying to solve it through finding answers for the mundane amount of questions. 
 
Just to be clear, I have no tendency for depression. 
 
II
 
I started my professional study at Pärnu Art School that was supposed to be only for children at the time. I don't take the word "professional" very seriously nor that something is more for children than for any other human being. We are always students at something, doesn't matter of age. So it was really at an early age. 
 
My second school that had an impact was Pärnu Sütevaka School Of Humanistics. A lot of philosophical and social knowledge was given there. 
 
Otherwise I have learnt a good deal from books (my mother works at the library, so my childhood was pretty much spent there), travels and great masters. 
 
III
 
People and accidental incidents tend to happen just at the right time. I have had a climpse of life-altering, eye-opening exhibition visits, but more than that, encounters to wondrous people. As the saying goes, I have seen far thanks to the giants whose shoulders I've had the chance to stand on. 
 
You have to work on cleaning your force, that is, to become a better person in terms of a grander soul that is doing more, even if with bare being. 
 
I don't think there are a lot of artists in 21st century that can say they are lucky enough to have day to day direct contact with their artistic master. I have many artists that I adore for different reasons/skills. I try to study, but in the end, I make up my own world. That's what one's world is about: to create your own buildable reality. 
 
You are either a participant in life or you take charge, take responsibility, and create what you want. 
 
I have always wanted to build a lot. 
 
IV
 
To name a few top artists on my non-existent list, I admire Joan Mitchell for the free flow, I like Paul Klee for the imagination (so as Kandinsky!), I clap on Cecily Brown from the new era because of the intimacy, and I miss Enzo Cucchi, with whom I've had the most alluring conversations, even though he speaks only Italian from which I can understand only a little of something. 
 
But he is the grandest of philosophers I've seen in life. He is the one talking red wine green. He says the eyes never have problems. 
 
The eyes are tools for the masters. 
 
V

 
He says, that the eyes never have problems. The heart has problems. The eyes never have problems, because the eyes see the light, the eyes are the light, and the eyes have no problems. Humans have problems. 
 
So let's see where this co-existing leads us. Perhaps from a dual world seeing to understanding that all really is one wheel? I am the first to say that there is no light without dark, no worshipping of goodness without accepting the evil. All that works in a perfect symphony to create a continuum, a continuous life, where one's mission is to be as happy as one can, and possibly, to be of use to someone, and specially to that one's higher self. To develop. To never stay standing still. 
 
You want to be the champagne, responsible for your bubbles, after all.
 
VI
 
So there is no reason to take everything seriousy. The poetics and philosophy for their beauty can have a lot more meaning than many boring, dry and just the same non-meaningful alternatives. In tandava of Kashmir Shaivism, the basic practice is dance. The dance you can dance just as you sit on your couch, or in the metro in modern Paris. The point being, you move so slowly, so silently, but you acknowledge that you move; and little by little, you see that the moving takes place within. That's when the outter change happens. 
 
The very obvious is for the green apples.
 
VII
 
To put light and take colour into matter. To be precise, Tesla already knew it. Everything is energy and everything that you see has been somebody's thought. You can think about things for what they are, or you can take them as they are. The latter is direct experience that humans seem to crave and long after more, than anything else. 
 
Attention with intensity, if it has any kind of connectedness to the spirit, can have the effect of healing, because the direct experience is so strong - and the direct experience can be continuous via day to day practice. 
 
For example, if you look at a piece of great art on your wall every day. It'll be worth it. 

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