Yesterday I chose a different goal for my Sunday walk. I went to see the Finnish Painters' Union sales event at the Cable factory.

The space itself is quite impressive, as old factory halls often are. The paintings, on the other hand, were a mixed lot. The Union is an organisation of professional painters, which is hard to credit on the ground of the stuff in the exhibition. Some of it was fairly good. There was one that would have been acceptable even a hundred years ago: a sleeping nude from behind. However, much of it looked amateurish, incompetent and unoriginal. I believe I have enough judgment to tell apart deliberate clumsiness and the "real thing", of which there was more than enough. It was amusing to observe paintings I could have made 30 years ago, as far as style, level of skill and content is concerned, and they were by no means among the worst. Fortunately there were also well made things that it would never have occurred to me to paint.

They have a neat way of selling: once you buy a painting, they wrap it up and you can take it home straight away. So there are no unsold paintings left on the walls. On the other hand, towards the end of the exhibition there aren't many good paintings left to see.