SKY AND SKY

“How do you paint a sky that is not a “sky” at all?
In my paintings I want to depict the visible and at the same time the invisible, that changing, flowing, barely sensed part of existence. The moment between two actions – time has stopped… a pause… stillness …
And at the very same time the surroundings are in motion, changeable; they are not perfect and not finished.
In painting I am interested in depicting an environment that has this unfinishedness, this impermanence. In that way I try to imitate the elements of nature.
Out in nature, looking carefully, you can see how the colours of the sky and the atmosphere affect all this around us — our moods too, and our choices.
I think this whole can be called the SKY.
I paint in oils as though in watercolour; that way I can show atmosphere, light, air, that space I have no name for. The visual language of the paintings runs from a realistic view to a conditional, abstract rendering.”

Madara Gulbis

Ungraspable vastness and the experience of silence are notions the mind can hardly contain.
An artist can draw inspiration there and take the risk of depicting all of it in the work. The eternal mismatch between the artist's thought and the truth the viewer perceives is not always what matters; the viewer may give way to imagination and arrive at a sense of infinity and silence of their own.
The viewer is invited to step across the borders of the visible and give way to feelings that lead away from the noise of the everyday — to where silence becomes a language and vastness a field of thought.
In Madara's paintings you can experience both the revelation of the sky's infinity and the silence that sometimes takes up residence in one's feelings. This exhibition is a visual journey through infinity, where the sky becomes a symbol of inner peace.
A contemporary
Riga, 2025.