The Archipelago of Colours

• He [Ortamo Mattila] could paint for hours, and I remember once when we were on the cliff and he was painting and it started to get dark. The mosquitoes came, we had to light a fire to keep them away, the smoke got in our eyes, and then Dad said: ‘Boys, don’t become artists.’
• Ouri Mattila, Tammio

The power and beauty of the sea are timeless sources of inspiration. The strong forms and colours of the eastern Gulf of Finland’s nature and buildings have inspired literature, music, and visual arts alike. It is said that artists who visited as summer guests sometimes paid part of their lodging by gifting the host a painting of their home or the surrounding landscape.

The bilingual Enckell family from Hamina spent summers in Kuorsalo already in the 1880s. Schoolteacher Helmi Enckell (1864–1928) bought Nätourinniemi in 1900. Energetic and walking barefoot on the island, Helmi had Villa Mäntylä built on her land, where her youngest brother Magnus also enjoyed staying. The sea had clearly left its mark on the solitude-loving Magnus Enckell already in childhood. The landscapes of the eastern Gulf of Finland are especially present in his watercolours. He likely sketched several works in Kuorsalo and even purchased land to build a studio there. Enckell’s close friend Verner Thomé also painted in Kuorsalo.

Ortamo Mattila (1911–1966)

Graphic artist, painter, and art teacher Ortamo Mattila from Lahti discovered Tammio through his wife. Irma Silander-Mattila (1913–1965), born in Vehkalahti, spent her early youth in the 1920s in a villa in Orminaiset on Tammio, built by her father. In 1950, the Mattila family came to Tammio as summer guests for a couple of weeks. They returned in 1963–64 with their two sons, and Ortamo returned again with them in 1966 after Irma’s passing.

Mattila was known as a watercolourist and a masterful user of colour. During his final summer on Tammio, he searched for a new style in his oil painting, working only with a palette knife.

Poem
The Mattila family was in mourning in July 1950. Their daughter, born in May, had died of whooping cough. Warm childhood memories and perhaps childhood friend Saara Kalske (née Kouki) likely influenced the journey to Tammio. Irma Silander-Mattila, a prolific drawer-writer, expressed her grief through poetry.

From afar a sigh arrives over the sea,
the sigh of all
who are sorrowful,
united with the heavy breath of the waves.

The swell crushes its chest against the cliff
and retreats once more
into the arms of its great mother.

Human pain strikes the rocky slab
in despair, anger, and defiance.
In vain, in vain! —

Nothing stirs the hardness of the rock,
but on the way back —
one can already laugh
at others attempting the same madness.

**— **Irma Silander-Mattila, Tammio, 24 July 1950