The philosopher Henri Bergson says that “perception is never a mere contact of the mind with the object present; it is impregnated with memory-images which complete it as they interpret it.” My paintings come about in just that way – they begin from an image or a real object: a ray of light, an expressive shadow, a reflection, or perhaps a bird that visited me in the yard for a moment. And the moment interweaves with layers of memory, with a space already lived, in which the moment lingers, letting the past flow into the present and dismantling the borders of clock-dictated time. The past saturates our present consciousness at every instant, and my hope is that every viewer, too, will go on enriching my works with the memory of their own experience, taking them in through the prism of their own past.
Ornament has a particular importance in this exhibition: it works as a drawing-in, meditative pattern that, inviting the viewer's eye to follow the lines, allows one to step outside time for a while, to forget the headlong rush and to linger in another, one's own inner, slow and quiet time.
About the artist
Dita Lūse
Dita Lūse is widely known for her nuanced oil paintings and for her particular technique in oil, which recalls the fragility of watercolour — thin, many-layered applications of paint make an impression of lightness and transparency. Her work takes in a wide range of subjects, but at its centre stand the relations of light and time. Lūse often depicts spaces saturated with the presence of memory, bringing out the depth and atmosphere that light creates.