Composition II

A. Kašauskas was born in 1959 in Vilnius. From 1977 to 1982 he studied fresco and mosaic at the  Vilnius Academy of Arts.

"When I was studying frescoes, it was explained that a minimum amount of colour was enough, and that a painting should be made through expressive drawing and a strong composition, but during my many years of experience, I began to realise that the basis of painting is colour.

At the moment I want to put on canvas reflections of the world around me as I see it - a kind of interpretation of the world around me. Using colour, textures, drawing, brushstrokes, to create some original thing called a painting. To encode certain information, emotions, spiritual states, which would radiate energy from the wall somewhere, even when I am no longer alive," says the artist about his work.

Arvydas combines the values of the past with a modern abstracted style in a contemporary way. His work is easily recognisable from the thick, strong brushstrokes that come from the fresco painting era and the bright color palette, often very reminiscent of Renaissance painting. It is no coincidence that author himself says that he often looks at the past rather than the future, which is where the strong composition of his paintings comes from. However, his works are not at all lacking in immediacy - the constructive brushstrokes lie in a modern abstracted landscape, allowing the artist to surrender to the inner rhythms of nature and containing the most important artistic element - emotion, which is impossible without improvisation, inclination and a little chance. The artist says that the element of chance is not lost on even the greatest professionals, and he believes that it should not be avoided, but embraced - that is how you discover something new and unexpected, how you move forward.

Looking at his work, you will quickly see that he is extremely fond of taking part in plein air painting and painting in nature. Kašauskas travels around his country, through its forests, meadows, villages, rivers and marshes, capturing them in a kind of epic of Lithuanian nature. The author's paintings are important to encode inner vibrations, spiritual states that will be felt in a moment long gone.