Solo exhibition „P I R M Ā“ (The First)
On 23 March 2026, in Riga, at Berga Bazārs, I opened my first solo exhibition, „P I R M Ā“, The First. It was an impulsive idea to introduce myself and my work only half a year after opening my studio, but I wanted to live through the moment when someone looking at art meets the work and its author for the first time; the moment when that exchange becomes a conversation with meaning. The exhibition was my story about growing, about my passions, and about a deliberate wish to stop in this hurried world in order to carry on differently.
In my practice I have chosen abstraction as my main visual language, which lets me show emotion and everything the heart turns over in the mind. To make what is in the painting more vivid, I often also write poetry for it (ekphrasis), saying in metaphor what I feel. There were 42 paintings in the exhibition, and it was the ones with poetry beside them that made a viewer's eye come back to the work a second time.
My opening speech was in verse as well (a fragment of it below):
The things we do for the very first time
Stay in our hearts for a lifetime.
Do you remember the first road walked alone,
The taste of fresh milk, far from home?
Your first September, your first mistake,
The first wrong turn you dared to take?
Your first date, your first sweet kiss,
Your first real job - remember this?
Life gives us firsts both great and small,
A lot of beginnings that shape us all.
And still, there’s one more first for me,
One I have longed to live and see.
So here it is - my very first show,
My first artworks, and the first steps where I’ll go.
Please don’t judge them too harshly today -
They’re the first small steps along my way.
Within them lives my naive heart,
The tender beauty of a brand-new start.
Here are my courage, doubts and fears,
And all the joy that brought me here.
They are not perfect - nor should they be,
For growing means becoming more of me.
And step by step, through all I do,
I’ll learn to call myself an artist, too.
The exhibition has closed, the first experience is behind me, and what I lived through has given me the impulse for my next steps in art. I keep challenging myself, living through first times, and telling my story in paintings and in poetry.