Who's the Queen Here?

Laimonas Šmergelis is a painter appreciated for his distinctive style. No matter what genre he chooses, you can always see who the author is, because no one else combines the craft of realistic painting with unbridled imagination like this.

Although the artist is open to various ideas, lately he mostly chooses the genre of portrait, but rather than painting a specific person, he prefers to depict a character trait or mood. It may seem impossible to imagine, but these portraits are very universal and we can all recognise a small part of ourselves in them. It is not so much the facial features themselves that are important here, but rather the various details surrounding them that carry the greatest load of meaning. They become symbols that embody what is going on inside a person.

A large part of these portraits are of children. The artist devotes a lot of his time to developing the artistic talents of the little ones, and it is obvious that he often draws inspiration from them. However, Šmergelis depicts childhood in an unadulterated way, and the driving force is far from being just sentiment. For the artist, a child's face is not only beautiful when it smiles. The author often depicts children as bored, thoughtful and sometimes sad. Children in his paintings embody the fundamental values that we lose as we grow up. Sometimes one even wonders if this is not our inner child that lives in every adult.

The most important thing for the author is to convey an inner state, an idea in his work, which is why he himself says that he is most surprised and delighted by those works that he undertakes spontaneously, without long preliminary reflections. Šmergelis's works reflect a wide range of inner states, but he says he never depicts anger or inner darkness. Art is for higher things.


Laimonas Šmergelis lives and works in Utena. Since 1990 he has been participating in exhibitions, art projects and fairs.  He has held more than 60 solo exhibitions and participated in over 200 group exhibitions in Lithuania and abroad.