Artist statement
My current practice explores human and nature relationship. In my artwork I examine different possibilities in interpretation of human alienation from nature by hinting at consumer lifestyle as a probable reason.
My work implies landscape elements, regarding landscape as a portrait of nature. Landscape can be looked at as a focus for the formation of identity. Growing separateness from nature and dominating consumer lifestyle results in people tending to spend more time in constructed, artificial spaces like shopping malls and waiting halls in airports defined as non-places, which are real measure of our time and opposed to places have no identity, relations and history.
My recent work deals with miniature landscape paintings placed in standardized plastic bottle caps. The scenes are a small world on it's own depicting sky, meadows and woods, surrounded by contemporary frame. One could say: 'The world is my imagination.' The cleverer one is at miniaturizing the world, the better it could be possessed. The notion of possession links with consumerism. Even not showing any trace of human presence the scenes juxtapose contemporary consumer lifestyles with man's historically romantic relationship with nature. The usage of mass produced plastic caps implies the ambiguity of trashing landscape on the one hand, and recycling the caps on the other. The work in the same time investigates the common trend of landscape itself being turned into commodity (the idea of portable, convenient landscape). So the work addresses the individual's sense of belonging to specific place as well as questions global ecological issues.
The miniature scale engages the viewer by offering a close examination and a different look at surrounding world.
Qualifications and training
- 2011 MA Fine Art, Wimbledon College of Art, London
- 2009 BA Humanities and Fine Art, Art Academy of Latvia, Painting department
