Julija Skudutytė

Artist is based in: -

Since 2010 when I was still in National Čiurlionis School of Art studying painting I started consistently working with watercolour. For me because of the layering this technique was perfect for depicting what I saw most beautiful: old wood, bricks, anything that was touched by time, had texture and was filled with colours and undertones. That’s when I started going to old neighbourhoods that still had traditional old Lithuanian wooden houses left and I would paint in the open air, depicting the details in natural light. I displayed this collection in 2018 exhibition ‘Watercolours and Lewdness’ at St. Johns’ gallery in Vilnius.

I was contemplating why I love old looking things and understood that I have always admired the messiness and randomness in things that have aged. How honest it was. Not only that but how much the randomness in a household mess can tell you. Like nature morte of scattered things on the table. This genre in itself gives so much space to hide meaning in a composition. That’s why during my studies in Vilnius Academy of Arts I started painting more overcrowded interiors, with people or without them. In these painting I started leaving white paper where the light was. As Edward Hopper has said: ‘All I ever wanted to do is to paint sunlight on the side of a wall.’ His words strongly resonates with me because I felt the more I worked with this difficult watercolour technique the more I concentrated on the shadow and what I wanted to depict was how rich in colour is shadow how it changes in comparison to light. If light is cold the shadow is warm and vice versa. For this I started leaving spaces that were lit by light untouched, just whiteness of the paper. That would create pauses in a painting where a viewer could ‘breath’ and the concentration would go to the shadow. This collection of still-lifes I showed in a personal exhibition ‘Landscapes and Still-lifes’ in 2018 at ‘Galera’ gallery in Vilnius.

Also during my studies at Vilnius Academy of Arts I started questioning stories and meaning behind the objects. I started visiting old people to draw them and their surroundings. When I would paint them they would tell me their difficult and complicated life stories. But through time I stopped depicting them and only concentrated on their surroundings. I did this consciously because when I asked them to pose for me they would go brush their hair and change their clothes and the authenticity of them would disappear, but their surroundings: plastic bags filled with potatoes under the table, glass jars with pickles and wooden cupboards full with all-purpose spices wouldn‘t be hidden. These details would tell the most about them as human beings. For example, one old lady used to tell me that her dog got fat and she doesn‘t know why, because he doesn‘t eat anything, but then I could see dog‘s bowl filled with bread covered in butter. That‘s why I started to pay more attention to their things and I was mesmerised of how beautiful their mess was for me. All the thing were laid out (un)consciously in such a beautiful way as if it was a mathematical chaos theory where order and meticulousness is in messiness and randomness. Like Entropy: system in randomness. That’s why all of my master studies were about the entropy of a household mess in particular a hoarding mess. When you go to a hoarders house you can see all the cluttered spaces as if their mind and thoughts were on display. For a while I was renting a room in such an apartment. A woman living there was the nicest person and even though I would listen to her life story for me her hoarded jars and plastic bags were the most beautiful thing. It was so honest. The unconscious compositions she made for me was perfection. I just wanted to depict that entropy. When I showed watercolours made from this apartment to the woman who’s stuff it was, she said it was beautifully detailed but didn’t want to be mentioned as co-creator. In 2020 this series from the hoarded apartment was displayed in a personal exhibition ‘Entropy’ in ‘Studium P’ gallery in Vilnius.

For ‘Entropy’ series I got an award by Dalia and Gintaras Gruodžiai for evocative artworks. Also, in 2020 with two of the watercolours from this series I won the competition and participated in 208th watercolour exhibition organised by ‘Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours’ held in ‘Mall Galleries’ in London.

I believe everything is consistent. And the most important thing an artist could give to the viewer is honesty of his work, being true to himself. As Oscar Wilde has said: ‘We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.’