Joel Jalmari Ruokokoski, known as Jali, was a Finnish Expressionist painter born in 1886 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. His father was a shoemaker from Savonia. The family moved to Finland when he was thirteen and settled in Helsinki. He studied at the Central School of Art and Design from 1902–1904 and at the Art Society Drawing School from 1903–1906. There he met Tyko Sallinen and would atter join him in the avant-garde expressionist group November Group.

     Ruokokoski's first public show came in 1905. Yet until his artistic breakthrough and success four years later, he earned extra money by drawing advertisements and cartoons. Although most of his works were landscapes and still-lifes, he is probably best known for a series of portraits (including numerous self-portraits) painted mostly during the 1910s.

     In 1910 he and his wife took a trip to Paris, courtesy of a travel scholarship, and he was introduced to the work of the Impressionists. In 1912 he spent some time in Helsingør, Denmark, with the family of Niels-Peder Rydeng, a tailor and art collector who had once employed Tyko Sallinen. Word had gotten around that Rydeng was a generous man who would offer free room and board in return for paintings. The artist stayed for several weeks, producing sixty paintings, including portraits of Rydeng's family. They developed a lasting friendship and Ruokokoski returned there many times.

     Back in Helsinki, he was able to sell all the paintings he had brought with him at an exhibition in the Ateneum, but spent most of the money on a drinking and partying binge.

     In 1915, he settled in Hyvinkää, where he and Sallinen opened adjacent studios called "Humala ja Krapula" (Drunk and Hungover). Ruokokoski lived in "Drunk", painting what he saw from his windows, with an occasional trip to do landscapes. He stayed there until 1918, when he divorced his first wife Elvira and married Saima Forsström, a model, despite his studio's financial failure. 

     He was always successful as an artist, exhibiting throughout Scandinavia as well as Rome and Milan, but continued to squander most of his money and was never far from financial ruin. He began producing quickly sketched pictures of simple things such as leaves, food and sunsets to earn extra income. By 1931, he was barely earning a living from a small tenement apartment.

     His last exhibition was in 1935. Toward the end of that year, he was hospitalized for alcohol abuse, which had damaged his liver and given him throat cancer.

     The artist is represented in these public institutions:

• Finnish National Gallery

• Espoo Museum of Modern Art

• Turku Art Museum

• Helsinki Art Museum

• Lönnström Art Museum

• Riihimäki Art Museum

• The Didrichsen Art Museum (Finnish Visual Arts)

• Serlachius Museum

• Kuopio Art Museum

• South Karelia Art Museum