The other day, Luis was in my studio chatting with me while I was drawing a gnome on the paper of Catalonia Oro Negro Hotel (Tenerife). I was dripping, fouling and scratching he drawing and he was asking the meaning of every action.The constant question was - what does that say?

Luis is my neighbor and an amateur painter. But not one of those who paint landscape bullshit. He doesn't know the art history or the theory but he believes that the art is a weapon. His technical skills are still rather low but I think I've never seen any dilettante painter doing such an interesting work - they really don't look like outsider art (they look more like my stuff!).

Luis is against all the decoration in my works. He thinks that the message is the only content and should be as direct as possible. His comments remind me that I'm just an old-fashioned modernist creating beautiful commodities.

Luis is one of the two persons visiting my studio regularly - the other is my wife who thinks that my works are nowadays too illustrative. She thinks I should make more subtle, more beautiful and more complex things.

When many foreigners think of Spain, they think of the bright sun and cheap pints but the country where I've lived over ten years has nothing to do with that panorama. Now in Playa de las Americas, Tenerife, it's the first time I see the touristic beach Spain misconstructed for the British and Nordic working class replete of beans on toast breakfast served all day and shabby lap dance bars catering to shirtless lager bathers.

Neverthless, I've been enjoying the short vacation with four generations of my Finnish family and the beautiful sea views reading Rosa Liksom's story about a Transsiberian rail trip through the 80's Soviet Union and Chan Koonchung's dystopian novel of People's Republic of China in 2013.

I've been having fun in the studio with the adhesive glitter  Luis brought me this week. I'm continuing the Mexican drawings series - regretting not having spent more time in Monterrey when I did a solo show at Pristine Galerie last year.

You need at least one month in a new place to understand a bit about its politics, culture and visual atmosphere. Reading Wikipedia can't be compared with field work. Though the works look good, I'm afraid of them being superficial and full of exotic clichés about the narco-capitalism.

Artistas Asesinos, Los Aztecas, La Barredora, Los Caballeros Templarios, Cártel de la Calle, Cártel del Centro, Cártel de Colima, Cártel del Golfo, Cártel de Guadalajara,, Cártel Independiente de Acapulco, Cártel e Jalisco Nueva Generación, Cártel de Juárez, Cártel del Milenio, Cártelde Oaxaca, Cártel de la Sierra, Cártel de Sinaloa, Cártel de Tijuana, Los Chachos, El Comando del Diablo, La Familia Michoacana, Gente Nueva, La Línea, La Mano con Ojos, Los Matazetas, Mos Mexicles, La Nueva Administración, La Oficina, La Resistencia, Los Texas,  Los Zetas.

In the famous video piece The Painter, Paul McCarthy depicts Willem de Kooning giving his ass to be sniffed by his admirers repeating you can’t do it anymore, you can’t do it anymore.

I think I can't do it anymore. I mean to paint. And that's why I keep on painting. I went to Madrid and spent over €2000 on painting materials though my wife said that I should stop painting. In her opinion, my paintings are too illustrative. She thinks I should concentrate solely in drawing but that would be too easy. Easy art is not good art. Good art needs blood, toil, tears and sweat. Or at least lots of ketchup like McCarthy's painter.

I wouldn't give a shit about the fact that my hometown Helsinki is The World Design Capital this year. It is a humbug city promotion project by an organization called  International Council of Societies of Industrial Design. Anyways, the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper asked my comment about Finnish design.

Question: What is the most significant achievement of the Finnish design? And what is the most overrated?

Answer: All design is overrated. Design is totalitarian and hierarchical. Design can be used only in the way the designer intended it to be used. The designer prevents the creativity of the user of his object, product or construction. Finnish design has been a tool to construct a monoculture. All the Finns have the same overpriced and über stupid Aalto Vases.

Some outlaw capitalist clubs can be distinguished by a 1% patch worn on the colors. This is claimed to be a reference to a comment made by the American Capitalist Association (ACA) in which they stated that 99% of capitalist were law-abiding citizens, implying that the last one percent were outlaws. The comment is denied by the ACA — who claim to have no record of such a statement to the press, and that the story is a misquotation. As a result, some outlaw capitalist clubs use it to unite or express themselves and are commonly referred to as one percenters.