“Despite his great erudition and outstanding ability to theorize, Ülo was a genuine person of feeling - at times surprisingly tender and even sentimental. His greatest love was Hiiumaa, and especially the Pendi farm, whose enchantment seems to have accompanied him until his death.

‘I dream of Pendi all the time,’ he confessed to me as we drank vodka together, ‘especially the junipers in Pendi’s sheepfold. Their marvelous shapes, formed by the sheep’s nibbling. I see them in fog and rain, in snow and moonlight, on summer nights and at sunrise.’

In such moments he seemed like a romantic adolescent boy.

Art historians have found surrealist imagery in Ülo’s junipers. Their fantastic forms have been interpreted as a Sooster-like act of world-creation, unrelated to visible reality.

Such intriguing arguments have been printed page after page, and they are a pleasure to read, yet it seems that the truth of Ülo’s images is much simpler. Anyone who has not seen the extraordinary forms of junipers shaped by Hiiumaa sheep - those artist-gardeners - may take the objects in the pictures for the artist’s imaginary world, merely given the name ‘junipers.’

In one respect, however, the theorists are right. These are ideal, perfected, purified forms, for Ülo longed for a large, clear, and pure image - one that dominates all his finest works. Yet in truth, it seems, Ülo painted into those forms his love, his memories, his losses, and his pain.”

Heinz Valk, “Escape from the Bright Future”

Photo: Ülo Sooster with relatives in Hiiumaa. From the right: Ülo, ?, Ülo’s uncle August, Ülo’s aunt Aino, Ülo’s father Johannes, ?, Ülo’s sister Eha, Ülo’s son Tenno Pent, Ülo’s brother Ants.