About the Author

Tom of Finland's real name is Touko -
because he was born on 8 May 1920, on the south coast of Finland, and
May in Finnish is "Toukokuu". His homeland had been independent for just
three years when Touko was born, and outside its few cities the country
was still rough and wild. The men who worked in the fields and woods,
the farmers and loggers, were true frontiersmen, every bit as rough and
wild as the countryside.


Touko grew up among those men but was not a part of their world. Both
his parents were schoolteachers, and they raised Touko indoors in an
atmosphere of art, literature and music. Obviously talented, by the time
he was five he was playing the piano and drawing comic strips. He loved
art, literature and music.

But he loved those outdoorsmen even more. At that same age of five,
Touko began to spy on a neighbour, a muscular, stomping farmboy whose
name, "Urho", means "hero". Urho was the first in a long line of heroes
to hold Tom's attention while he memorized every flex of their lean
muscles, every humorous twist of their full lips.


In 1939, Touko went to art school in Helsinki to study advertising. His
fascination expanded to include the sexy city types he found in that
cosmopolitan port - construction workers, sailors, policemen - but he
never dared proposition them. It was not until Stalin invaded Finland
and Tom was drafted into a lieutenant's uniform that he found nirvana in
the blackouts of World War II. At last, in the streets of the
pitch-black city, he began to have the sex he had dreamed of with the
uniformed men he lusted after, especially once the German soldiers had
arrived in their irresistible jackboots. After the war, Touko went back
to studying art and also took piano classes at the famed Sibelius
Institute. Peace put an end to blackout sex and uniforms became rare
again, so Touko returned to his teenage practice of locking himself in
his room, stripping naked, and stroking himself with one hand while the
other hand created on paper what he could seldom find on the streets.


By day, he did freelance artwork - advertising, window displays, fashion
design. In the evenings, he played the piano at parties and cafes,
becoming a popular member of Helsinki's post-war bohemian set. He
avoided the fledgling gay scene, because what were then called
"artistic" bars were dominated by the flamboyant effeminacy typical of
the time. He traveled frequently, becoming very familiar with the gay
cruising areas found in every major city. Still, in 1953, when he met
Veli, the man with whom he would live for the next 28 years, it was on a
street corner a few blocks from home.



At the end of 1956, at the urging of a friend, Touko sent his secret
artwork to a popular American muscle magazine, but, being cautious in
those paranoid times, and anyway thinking that "Touko Laaksonen" was too
tough a name for American tongues, he signed them,"Tom". The editor
loved them. The cover of the Spring 1957 issue of "Physique Pictorial"
features a laughing lumberjack, drawn by "Tom of Finland". It was a
sensation. Touko became Tom of Finland. The rest is history.



The demand for what Tom always called his "dirty drawings" grew quickly,
but neither erotic art nor homosexual art paid very well in the
Fifties. He soon stopped playing the piano in order to devote the time
to his drawing, but it would be 1973 before Tom of Finland was making
enough money for Touko Laaksonen to be able to quit his daytime job in
advertising. Once he could devote his efforts full-time to his erotic
drawing, Tom combined photorealistic attention to detail with his
wildest sexual fantasies to produce a body of work that, for sheer
homoerotism, will probably never be surpassed.


1973 was also the year of Tom's first art exhibition, in Hamburg,
Germany, but that experience was so negative (all but one of the
drawings were stolen) that it would be 1978 before he would agree to
another exhibit, in Los Angeles, for which he made his first trip to
America. Over the next couple of years, a series of exhibitions in Los
Angeles, San Francisco, and New York, with trips to America for each
one, turned the shy Helsinki artist into an international gay celebrity
with friends the like of Etienne and Robert Mapplethorpe. The business
end of his career was taken up by a Canadian American, Durk Dehner, and
under his capable management Tom at last had financial security. In
1981, Tom's lover, Veli, died of throat cancer; at the same time, the
AIDS epidemic began to hit hard the very cities and circles of friends
he had so recently come to love in America. Still, throughout the
Eighties, the trips to America continued to increase until Tom was
spending six months in L.A. with Durk Dehner for every six he spent back
in Helsinki. After emphysema was diagnosed in 1988, Tom was forced to
curtail his beloved traveling but continued to draw.


When the disease, and the medication, made his hand tremble too much for
him to execute the finely detailed work for which he had become famous,
Tom switched back to a childhood favourite, pastel, executing a richly
coloured series of nudes in that medium almost up until his death from
an emphysema-induced stroke on 7 November 1991. In spite of his own
affectionate term, Tom's work must be considered more than just "dirty
drawings", and given some of the credit for the change in the gay
world's self-image. When Tom's work was first published, homosexuals
thought they had to be imitation women, and spent their lives hiding in
the shadows. Thirty-five years later, gays were much more likely to be
hard-bodied sun-lovers in boots and leather, masculinity personified.
Tom's influence in that direction was no accidental byproduct of his
art. From the beginning, he consciously strove to instill in his work a
positive, up-beat openness. When asked if he was not a little
embarrassed that all his art showed men having sex, he disagreed
emphatically: "I work very hard to make sure that the men I draw having
sex are proud men having happy sex!"

- Valentine Hooven III