Like the rest of my works, I drew inspiration for the cycle “They say” from real life.
As a self-employed artist, selling my work has always been important to me. And as a sensitive person, I don’t feel too comfortable when the buyer starts haggling and stiffing and saying things I don’t particularly like to hear. At the same time, it’s part of the artist’s existence – do your thing, put it out there for public viewing and just wait and see what happens next.
From the beginning of my career until now, I’ve heard a wide variety of comments from people about why they unfortunately can’t buy my work. I say “unfortunately” because it usually starts something like “I really like this job BUT…”
So one day I started collecting these comments. This series has some of the most beautiful excuses for not buying a piece of art that they would otherwise really like to buy,” – Marko Mäetamm, 2022.
Marko Mäetamm lives and works in Tallinn. He studied graphics at the Estonian Academy of Arts, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in 1993 and a master’s degree in 1995. He has been participating in exhibitions since 1992, having held 68 solo exhibitions and participated in more than 150 group exhibitions around the world. Marko Mäetamm has received several awards, including the Kristjan Rauda Annual Award (Estonia, 2000), the Baltic Assembly Award in Art (2009) and the Estonian Cultural Capital Fund Award (2011). In 2008, the artist received the award of the Republic of Estonia – the Order of the White Star V class.
Marko Mäetamm is in public collections – KUMU Art Museum (Tallinn, Estonia), Viinistu Art Museum (Vīnistu, Estonia), Signet Bank (Riga, Latvia), BTA – Vienna Insurance Groupart collection (Riga, Latvia), Aston University (Birmingham, Great Britain), Colgate University (Hamilton, New York, USA
