I always want to say: “See it in action! There, all that is in me, there the soul is open and all that is said in words is superfluous. “
And if anyone else finds this interesting, I was born (1969), grew up in Latvia, and my first important teacher was Raitis Zink, the owner of the LPM Museum. After many attempts to get into the Art Academy of Latvia, where I always hit a bureaucratic wall (no centralised exams, no Rozentāls School or applied secondary school, etc.), I realised that I had to take a different path. I got to where I needed to be, and life took me to Russian artists. My teachers are Vitaly Makarov (Essentuki) and Vladimir Kozhevnikov (St Petersburg). Thanks to them and the development of my skills, I had the opportunity to take part in international plein-air exhibitions in countries all over the world: Serbia, India, Montenegro, France, Italy, Spain, Georgia, Greece, etc. In India, there are two of my works in the N. Roerich Centre in the Himalayas, as well as in Serbia and Montenegro. These are achievements that warm my heart and enable me to travel the world with my easel and paint. And my greatest pride is that through travelling and participating in high-class plein-air workshops, all the artists of my childhood dreams are now my personal acquaintances and friends. I have been painting all my life, it has been quite a long road. My private collections are found all over the world.
On art and mission
People want to think that they are something special and beyond everything. Here’s a story: “Once upon a time, a baron built a castle and made a beautiful garden. The servants were told to do things: build, weed, etc. He himself managed his castle and a few other villages around it, and it seemed to him that he was so great and powerful”. I am passing by with an easel to that castle now. It is 300 years later. All that remains of the castle is rubble and a half-collapsed wall and the outline of what once was. Next to it, a lilac bush and a large meadow with snowdrops that someone once planted here 300 years ago, larches to the moon, and this. I look at those snowdrops and I realise: they grew then and they are still growing, and now there is a meadow. Who was more powerful in those 300+ years? That’s what my paintings are about – being part of nature. And it’s only the moments that matter, the ones that capture for me – the moments of the sun in the paintings, the mood captured, the sound heard, or the distant glimmer – the sensations. I speak through colours to the feelings of my soul, and you can see it in the same way – in the feelings!
