in love with sunshine

2009-10-16T11:54:00.001-07:00

Horizon, 110x200cm, acrylic on canvas, 2009

2009-10-16T11:52:00.001-07:00

The sand, the sea, the sky and the towel, 110x90cm, acrylic on canvas, 2009

Stadium

2009-10-16T11:48:00.000-07:00

Stadium. Shower, 140x140cm, acrylic on canvas, 2009

Stadium. Field, 140x110cm, acrylic on canvas, 2009

2009-10-16T09:38:00.000-07:00

The main problem I try to deal with in my painting is a narrative of the visible. The natural way to face a spectacle is to interpret it. By doing this, we are prescribing a narrative towards it. That is also a natural way of seeing a picture. By using the word “narrative” I do not imply a story, but rather a meaning, or a message. I like to work with this tendency of facing a spectacle.
In contrast to the classical perspective (where the centre of the perspective is found within the frames of the picture that leads to reading it as an organised universe), I often place the centre of the perspective outside the picture, that makes the viewer realise that what he sees is only a particle of the whole. In this way, the meaning is somewhere between the seen and the unseen and, therefore, it can never be thoroughly read. The everyday objects in my pictures are easy to recognise; they might even resemble illustrations from an encyclopaedia as they hardly have any specific characteristics; and the execution of painting is done in a passionless way. But it is difficult to prescribe a meaning. By doing this I seek the eye of the spectator to be leaping from sign to abstraction. Inability to judge upon the spectacle and, generally, upon the world is the main concept of my painting.
I try to emphasize the voyeuristic gaze of the spectator. Voyeuristic viewer is always alienated with the object of his or her gaze, but it is also a very passionate look. This feeling of alienation is another thing that interests me. I try to combine alienating feeling my paintings create with aesthetic pleasure. It serves as the plastic intensification of previously mentioned idea of inability to judge upon world.
Lately I have been investigating the possibility of relation between two pictures outside linear narrative. I made a few works consisting of two paintings, which might be called “diptychs”. The relation between them is neither based on aesthetic similarity or integration, nor on the story behind them. The placing of two pictures next to each other in space suggests a dimension in which it could possibly be connected, but this dimension is outside the picture and the linear narrative. It is very ephemeral. The first of these “diptychs” consists of two works. One is called 1.1 and the other 1.2. In logic (Wittgenstein in example) it is used to name two separate comments on the first thesis. These comments do not comment on each other, only on the common statement. One picture is a fragment of a roof, possibly somewhere in the mountains, but not necessary, and the other picture is a slalom post in the brightly purple snow. The other work is named “Stadium”, containing two pieces - “Shower” and “Lawn”. It is connected by the general location. But it also refers to different perceptions of human body: 1) “Field” - body operating in football field, moving under no control of the conscious and obeying the nature of the game; 2) “Shower” – a naked body in a public (although acceptable) place. Through the perspective of a viewer it is still a transgressive experience.

2009-05-10T12:20:00.001-07:00

100x120cm, acrylic on canvas, 2009

Vietoj ivykio

2009-03-19T09:36:00.001-07:00

100x120cm, acrylic on canvas

Before crossing the finish line

2009-02-22T07:47:00.001-08:00

2009-01-15T12:37:00.001-08:00

Cherry, Harry & Roquet

2008-11-19T09:48:00.001-08:00

2008-10-26T03:03:00.000-07:00

2008-10-13T13:50:00.000-07:00

privat public privat

2008-08-19T09:58:00.001-07:00

2008-08-01T08:55:00.001-07:00

Scene with a truck

2008-07-26T13:21:00.001-07:00

Square

2008-03-02T13:11:00.000-08:00

Fresh stuff

2008-01-29T11:51:00.000-08:00

Week-end

2008-01-17T11:07:00.000-08:00

Shot from the lost movie

2008-01-15T09:19:00.000-08:00

The motif and estetics of this picture was influenced by my passion for movies. This time it is thriller. Thriller as well as other genre movies has a certain structure, that almost never changes and estetic strategies that are always coherent with time. Nowadays the viewer of 70's and 80's thriller or blaxpoitation film cocentrates on style. Just as in J. L. Borges novels: the storytelling is more important than a story, storyteller doesn't care about his feelings or experiance, he is telling a story, that looks historical, but is all fiction. It is like fragments from the world we don't know. Painting a shot from a film and telling a story, that doesn't exist is a bit simillar: the sight is very concrete and looks like a stilled action, like a fragment of story. But both, the story and the action, might not even exist and is left untold to the viewer. It is only the fragment that we got.

Grey sky

2007-10-05T04:43:00.001-07:00

Fresh painting

2007-09-13T02:25:00.000-07:00

Paintings I've been working on lately

2007-06-15T03:36:00.000-07:00

I've just made photos of my fresh paintings. Those pictures that I've posted last time was made in about a year. Ofcourse there were few paintings that I didin't wanted to be posted on the blog. All the new paintigs were made in last two months and the last one was finishd about two weeks ago.

I made this one from a photo I've taken in "naujininkai" district in Vilnius. I like those places around the railway, because it is like an interruption of something that obays the other lows than the usual city life. Something very unfamiliar with a humankind at first sight. Those places are empty and becames a bit provintial because of that emptyness, but it is also essentialy industrial and urbun as well. I love this contrast. I liked the contrast between the open spece ( the sky ) and something very sharp and edgy in the bottom of the picture. I guess this time I've managed to capture that evnings melancholy.

The building in the picture is a football stadium. I'm a big fan of this kind of sport. Unfortunetly it isn't popular in Lithuania and the only feeling you can have walking round the stadium is the fealing of something that once was crowded and popular, but now is totaly abandond, of something thar was created for crowds, but is left for a slow invasion of nature . I captured this sight few years ago in Ferrara, Italy. I was walking through the stadium during the match between Ferrara and once world famous Napoli. Inside the stadium the crowds were chanting, but it was all very peaceful outside.

The main influence on this picture was De Chirico. I just loved the way he creates mistery out of painting simple architecture.

First steps

2007-06-04T03:32:00.000-07:00

Hi, it is a first time I present my pictures on my blog. I'm not very willing to write a lot about what I do. I'll just mention some key things that I find i n my pictures. I'm intrested in space, color and the mood, that my pictures create. I try to avoid sorrow and try to share the fealing of beatuful and relaxing melancholia that I enjoy so much. Most sights in my pictures are landscapes or interiors, but even if it sometimes looks like a certain place, it isn't taken from my real surroundings. Most pictures I paint derives from photos I take, but transformed into paintings it changes because of estetic effect that I need. I belive that realism in my pictures is a bit similar to the one in Antonioni films. It is realism that becomes abstract through the mood or estetic effect it creates.