I am used to many rejections because they started hitting me already in school. I was good at drawing when I was a kid, and then I entered drawing competitions everywhere, but I never won them. I always finished second or third. Even as a child, I could not detect the jury’s taste. I looked at that first-place job and thought it was a total bummer, and I had such excellent work. At first, of course, it affected my feelings, but I got used to it in the long run. 

I have participated in about twenty state tenders for art and won only once. I take all these contests with a competitive spirit. My father was an athlete, and that’s where this fighting and competitive spirit came from. With competitions, I take them as a test of myself, whether I can get to an exhibition or a festival somewhere or not. Some years I can, sometimes not. Well, so what! I already have other plans. I don’t suffer a lot after a rejection. I have grown such a thick elephant skin that I just read the bad news and forget. I take these things playfully. And in that sense, I don’t let these competition entries go to waste either. I use them all in my work. I guess I’m so damn self-confident that even my daughter, who is also an artist, gets mad and envies me that how can I be so self-assured. 

I have been nominated several times for various Estonian art awards but never received anything. If I ever get a lifetime achievement award at ninety, I won’t be able to enjoy it anymore. You feel joy when you are younger, you have many ideas, and money is also needed to fulfil these ideas. In old age, you don’t care about it anymore. 

Feedback from cancellations is also like hogwash. The committees are dominated by those who speak the loudest and who they want to highlight. After all, I have also been on these juries and seen how this work is done. Relationships and who you know and hang out with are very important. And I’m not so into those circles. You must remember that it is not often stuck in what you do and how much you do. There are a lot of subjective factors because it’s humans who decide. For example, I asked The Cultural Endowment of Estonia to support my creative catalog four times before I finally got it. You must not give up after the first “no,”, especially in art, where everything is subjective and emotional. Failure is not the end of the world. Every wall will eventually break if you go bang long enough.