DITA LŪSE

Recent Solo Exhibitions

Art can save the world

The Black Filled with Light
Solo exhibition in gallery Rāmis in Riga, Latvia

French painter Auguste Renoir once said, “Black is the queen of colours, because black contains all colours.”

We often consider black to be gloomy, and most of us strive for the light, bright, optimistic colours. Light is also at the center of my work, but I am also interested in the aspect of invisible light emerging from darkness. The white shines when surrounded by dark, velvety deep black, saturated with memories, premonitions and the unknown. I use X-ray images as inspiration for my paintings, and I feel them to be both very private and impersonal at the same time. Individuality has been lost, in the fleeting moment the bones have become a pattern. We can only observe the miraculous image illuminated by X-rays thanks to the black background, which highlights the beautiful ornamental patterns, ranging from gray to bright white. They make us notice the fragility of humans and plants, the power of life and the presence of the passage of time. Black without white is depth, silence, mystery. To achieve the harmony, black must be raised to other heights, filling it with light.

Light and Shape
Exhibition in Tukums Museum gallery Durvis

in Tukums, Latvia

I focus on light and time – light as an object and time as the present, in which memories of the past and what is seen before our eyes merge. My themes revolve around this core. For example - sun-filled spaces, where the past can be sensed, or sunlight flickering through the foliage, which breaks down the reality on the facade of the house. Or the shimmer of plants in the meadow, mixing with the fleeting lights that leap in fron of our eyes.

Another light
Art space of theatre Jūras Vārti,

in Ventspils, Latvia

The momentary light of X-rays makes it possible to stop the moment, to reveal the invisible, which I find to be a very personal imprint. In a flash of light, bones turn into an ornament, a pattern. The bone ornaments of living creatures that I paint remind us of mortality, of life, of the allotted time. Time, only in the form of the past, is also present in azulejos, marble floor patterns and the laces of metalworks. I tend to let time to become the fourth dimension and allow the viewer's imagination to wonder. If I succeed, the artwork captures the viewer and allows them to be outside of time for a moment.

Fading Times
Culture Centre Sigulda's Devons,

Sigulda, Latvia

Based on black and white and sepia photographs, both parade portraits and random snapshots from my family archive, which tend to pile up at the very bottom of the photo box, I have painted people with whom I am related by kinship ties, whose life stories I know, and who have been witnesses of 20th century. These portraits are exhibited on the backs of four larger unpainted canvases, between the stretcher bars, thus adding meaning to the concept of "background". All these people who come from the beginning of the 20th century are to some extent also my background, as a personality in a broader sense.

Looking at black and white photographs and old letters, I am trying to imagine what my relatives were thinking and feeling at the time. The stories I heard from my grandparents and the memories I inherited help me in part. But partly it is also my imagination, attempts to empathise, project my feelings.
An indirectly present image in my works is the war, which in the middle of the 20th century, just like now, radically changed life, separated families, took people to different sides, and what was happening affected both those involved and future generations.
Memories are fleeting, and as they are handed down from generation to generation, they become more and more blurred and vague. I would like to slow down this inevitable process, stop it for a moment, and feel the connection that unites me with my ancestors. By painting portraits of my relatives, I would like to give this cycle a generalization that describes an era that has greatly influenced our current life.

We will think about the rest tomorrow
Kuldīga Art House

Latvia, 2023

I am fascinated by how we perceive light and time. Light is essential in visual art, but I am drawn to painting light as an object itself. Time, for me, exists in the present—where memories of the past and the sights before us merge. A successful work of art, I believe, has the power to pull the viewer in, offering a brief escape from time.

These ideas form the core of my work. I explore them through various themes: ancient monastery rooms bathed in sunlight, where the presence of the past lingers; the play of light and shadow flickering through foliage, fracturing reality on a house’s facade for a passing observer; fragile structures of living creatures and plants, revealed in the impartial glow of X-rays. I am captivated by the shimmer of plants in a meadow, blending with the fleeting lights that dance before our eyes, and by memories stirred by old photographs and letters—including inherited memories—that pierce through time and shape our present.