Mara Daugaviete (born in 1955) is an artist and book illustrator.
She grew up in a creative family — her parents were artists — and drew a lot since childhood, especially interested in theatrical art.
She graduated from the art department of the Moscow Printing Institute and worked in book and easel graphics.
She takes part in personal and group exhibitions, both in Russia and abroad; she is the author of several exhibition projects. Mara Daugaviete’s works are in museums and private collections in many countries around the world.
First comes a metaphor, in which you feel the wealth of plastic possibilities, layers of meaning. I am always interested in a universal theme, a capacious plot that allows for ambiguous interpretations of meanings, complexity, and variability of understanding.
In a composition, I look for a clear plastic scheme, a “castle” of rhythms, the symbolism of a silhouette on the surface of the canvas, and several depth planes of the painting. Here a complex and exciting task arises — to harmonize all this wealth, to bring all the parts into line with each other and with the whole. It turns out that sometimes years are needed for this!
The light and air environment is a way to make an invented image credible. In some paintings, it is the theme and task of the artist. Color must be born in the imagination, light must be born from color, an object must be a reward, when gradually, intuitively, what should be is felt, asserts itself: the painting seems to be painted itself, leading me where it needs to be. My task is to listen to her voice and not to make false steps, not to rush about in search of means, so as not to lose the right path.
It is ideal when a picture is a piece of a whole world, created by color. It happens that a long, careful elaboration of elements, details, is finally brushed aside by a broad stroke of color: and yet it was not useless – it charges the work with energy, inspires, without this there is a feeling of lightness; these are the very “torments of creativity”, without which you are not so happy with the result achieved.
Website | maras-pictures.com
Books
Where do dreams come from?
Original title: Otkuda berutsya sny Every day, a boy in a striped cap named Didis works tirelessly. He catches fluffy clouds and shadows of rainbow butterflies in his magic net. Sometimes he manages to catch the bright tail of a big rainbow and add the buzzing of bees and croaking […]
