Skarina, a professor of arts and design at the Latvian Academy of Art, forms her works according to thematic and technical principles, yet stresses that “the unity of materials is manifest at the informative level.”
The works play on the artist’s own sense of rhythm, combining light with the malleable material into stories, rhythmic patterns and meditative moods.
The gallery’s webpage says Skarina “creates artworks that impart lightness, mood and feeling to her ceramic stories in which the ancient material shows contemporary interpretations. She uses white stoneware and porcelain as a basic material.”
She told LSM that the ubiquity of the clay medium used in her ceramic art objects underlines the ever-present forces of nature.
“Nature and matter speak with an almost hypnotic energy and work like an inexhaustible source of inspiration. To render the soul’s melody into clay without breaking its form, one must restrain the creative impulse. In ceramics everything is determined by the relationship between artist, idea, and medium.”
Skarina has been exhibiting works since 1980. Among the nations listed where she has exhibited during her career are Russia, Spain, Egypt, Taiwan, Japan, Lithuania and Estonia. In 2007 she was awarded a prize for creative vision at the 4th Snow Design contest in Japan. Her works are also on collection at the Taipei National History Museum in Taiwan, the Cairo Modern Art Museum in Egypt and at the National Art Museum of Latvia.
'The Shape of Light' will be on view until November 1.
