Ilze Smildzina

Painting allows me to tell a story without using words. My artwork contains fragments of what I have seen and experienced in everyday life, but these scenes have been placed in a different reality, thus highlighting the story itself. The depicted stories can take place elsewhere, but the spaciousness and infinite space allow the viewer to interpret the story as they wish. The sense of space and freedom has a lot of meaning. The people depicted in my paintings are my friends, acquaintances or people I have accidentally met, who are all now brought into the stories I have created. Other times, the storyline changes in the work process and the event is transformed into something completely different. The imaginary world through which I want to actualize a theme or image may be relevant to me or the public at the time. The stories in my paintings have a free space that allows each viewer to create their own scene. Ilze Smildziņa has a master's degree in painting from the Latvian Academy of Art in a figurative workshop and a master's degree in printmaking. The artist has had several solo exhibitions in Latvia and Lithuania, as well as participated in various local and foreign group exhibitions and art competitions, including ArtParis art exhibition, representing Saatchionline Art Gallery (2011), 6th Beijing International Art Biennale (2015, 2019), Paint One Another Know One Another” exhibition in Beijing (2016), Art Gemini finalist exhibition in London (2017, 2018), as well as art symposiums in France, Belarus, Finland, India and Cyprus. Ilze's artwork is featured in private collections in Canada, Belgium, France, Sweden, Germany, Ireland, the United States, Belarus and Latvia, the National Association of Chinese Artists and the Luciano Benetton Collection.