Today I finished the 100 blue and white monochromes. It took two months of long days and nights but I think it's worth it. Actually, painting was just a part of the job which needed several days of research too. Before painting, I made the lists of the titles, references for each color.

Finding the paints was an interesting task too - the system was not to mix them, they had to be ready-made. Blue color was easy, there are a great variety of tones and hues available. White was more complicated. First I didn't move very far from pure titanium white but buying a new car gave me a wider perspective what can be considered white. My wife chose for our new SUV a color called "white sand", which is a light brownish grey. I decided that if they call that thing white, I can call similar colors white too in my bicolor work.

Finally the summer heat is here, though the Spaniards say the summer begins the day when other nations celebrate Midsummer. I paint white monochromes in the morning, the afternoons - when it's too hot in my studio -  I spend with my kids at the swimming pool and after dinner I paint blue monochromes. Strangely my list of blue titles doesn't include swimming pool. I have ocean and blue lagoon but those things are very far from here.

My studio is empty. Galerie Forsblom organized the shipping of the finished paintings though the exhibition is not going to be inaugurated before January. I want to interpret that they think the works are so high quality that they don't want anybody - like curators that could be interested to show them earlier - to see them. Kiira asked me if I suffer of horror vacui but I feel much better with more space, which is valuable for completing my 100 blue and white monochromes, a monumental work that is driving me to the border of insanity. It's a great idea but too laborious for my nerves.

On Sunday, I took the kids to Madrid. We live only a bit more than 100km from the capital city, but they barely know it. We enjoyed riding cable car, taxi and metro - public transport is something special for a countryside child. We rented a rowing boat in the pond of the Retiro Park, where we visited the Madrid Book Fair and Reina Sofia Museum's exhibition sites. Rémy Zaugg's (1943-2005), who questioned everything which the surrounding world took for granted, garnering talk of a philosopher-artist, exhibition was interesting - one room featured exclusively white and blue monochromes painted in the early 70s. I was totally baffled, that's what I'm doing now, painting a series of 100 monochromes of these colors.

To finish the day, we had dinner at a terrace near Retiro. Suddenly Real Madrid's bus with the footballers and the Champions League trophy they won on Saturday passed by us. The team is called Los Blancos, The Whites, because they play in White monochrome kit.

Kiira, the director of Galerie Forsblom, came this week to see my new works and discuss our future projects. My daughter says she's my boss but I claimed that there's no hierarchy between us. I hope I'm not wrong, at least I didn't feel any power structure and we had wonderful time together as always.

However, these studio visits are very meaningful, it's a long way from Helsinki to my Spanish village. Kiira was pleased with the new works and we believe that my exhibition in the beginning of next year will be my best painting show ever. 90% of the work is already done, I just have to complete my monumental monochrome series during the summer.

When I was a kid, I did always my homework the afternoon it was given. Now I have to be more organized than ever. Next winter I'm going to have in three months the gallery show and two museum solo shows. It's almost like a schedule of a real art star.