2025 Finalists

The work “Again and praising all the hues of spring.”¹ is inspired by a deeply human, romantic longing for nature’s awakening. I am particularly fascinated by the period (around mid-April this year) when the landscape transitions from a completely grey, muddy-brown beginning of spring into a naively green, pre-summer phase. This intermediate period, in my subjective opinion, has an incredibly rich and constantly changing spectrum of colours (at least here in Lithuania). As A. Tarkovsky said: “A painter always works with colour and colour relationships.” Therefore, noticing and emphasising subtle natural colours is our (painters’) task. With this action, I aim not to depict the infinity of colours (which is simply impossible), but to awaken human perception during spring.

If we zoom out to my artistic practice, we will see that I explore human interaction with time. I am interested in the differences between the time we feel and the time we actually encounter. So, this work together with its title, represents a seasonal sense of time connected to nature’s cycles. For this work I used a calendar of the three spring months, but as I mentioned, spring’s miracle (awakening) happened in mid-April this year. However, this is not constant – it may shift a week earlier or later from year to year, and this natural timing is particularly fascinating to me.

I observed and selected colours in spring 2024 by painting panoramas through my studio window overlooking Bernardinai Garden Park. Creating live studies was necessary because I sincerely believe that an exact colour can only be found in relation to other colours. Later in spring 2025, I supplemented the colour palette by painting fresh leaves, flowers, and grasses gathered during walks around the academy’s surroundings. I titled this work after a line from Kristijonas Donelaitis’s poem The Seasons: “Again and praising all the hues of spring.” It alludes to the poetic initiation of this observation.

By presenting my work in an interactive way, I invite the viewer to touch, turn, and explore colour tiles and studies from life, hoping that their perception will mirror the very process of creating the work – guided by curiosity. While engaging with the piece, the viewer encounters the palette I recorded to reflect the colors of calendar spring.

This project is ongoing – I am currently painting summer and autumn landscapes and collecting material so that in the future I can prepare a comprehensive palette characteristic of Lithuania’s four seasons.

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¹ Kristijonas Donelaitis, The Seasons, translated by Peter Tempest, Spring Joys, line 403. Vilnius: Vaga, 1985. Lithuanian original: “Uostysim ir garbinsim pavasarį margą”. My translation: (“We will inhale and honour the colourful spring”)

(14/25)