INSIDE OUT. JURIED EXHIBITION OF ARTISTS FROM LATGALE REGION

From the inside out is a road that everyone follows throughout the entire course their life. Understanding the comprehensible and comprehending the understandable are the travel forms of the human spirit through which it moves further and further away from its source and approaches the great unknown. All peoples at all times have had many names for the milestones along this road, but, at base, it has always been and remains a progression from material to spiritual realm, from humanity to divinity.

Ability to see what is hidden, to understand the obscured, to feel the delicate threads that hold together both the world as a whole and individual lives is a special gift. We all possess it from birth, albeit to varying degrees, and, of course, it can be nurtured. The best way to do it through love and appreciation of the arts. After all, artists are like fishermen who pull their catch from the secret and mysterious depths of being. Using their hearts as bait, they draw from the unknown – colours and lines, images and subjects, plots and stories.

Paints, canvases, anything that artists should use in their work, are materials that help them to open a window into a different reality for the benefit of the viewer. To see through it, try to perceive art not as something extrinsic, but as intrinsic objects and observe your response.

Each time you see a painting, a sculpture or any other object created by an artist, try to hear the echo that it creates. Immerse yourself in a careful contemplation of yourself for at least a few seconds. The emanations of art are unpredictable and beautiful: colour spots, lines or figures dancing inside your head or a soft music, a delicate melody coming from afar, a light breeze or an unexpected and vivid recollection.

Approach them, draw nearer and nearer, focus your attention! And, at the peak moment of artistic experience, become it, merge with it utterly and completely, with no reservation! This will lead to a resonance, a revelation, a mutual vibration with a work of art. An incredible adventure for the human soul, both remarkable and thrilling. And each time a giant step from the inside out, into an infinite comprehension of life and the world around us.

Ksenia Shinkovskaya