Kunigunda Dineikaitė. Walking with a Swan

I am walking with a swan, it is to my left.
We are floating north.
The north turns westwards and seeing off the sun becomes eternal.

If spells – magical words that can protect from bad luck – exist, then Kunigunda Dineikaitė’s painting work should be properly called image-spells. These are poetic kaleidoscopes of colours and shapes which help tame the falling sky, avoid nettle stings, enchant the changing landscapes, rhyme the elements and unpredictable laws of existence. The naturally bewitching nature is charmed here, while the will to be smaller than it and constantly marvel at it emerges as the mightiest force. The artist turns these profound personal sentiments and intimate connections with places into abstract landscapes hailing from childhood memories, long walks, swarms of dreams, or visual epiphanies that will come true only later. ‘One must paint the future responsibly,’ says the artist.

In these original interpretations of her own experiences and the landscape genre that has been commonplace since the Renaissance, Kunigunda conjures fragile, magical, peculiar worlds in which colours look like mysterious birds that have landed on large-format canvas. One comes to believe that, floating on the surface of the paintings, they choose the stroke directions and build quirky composition nests. Swans are said to be intermediaries between the living and the dead. If that is true, the birds submerge their long necks and bills into the bottom of the painting to pull out elongated reflections reminding of the enigma and beauty of this reality, which gives birth to its twins in the mirror of a flowing river.

Perceiving the environment through the prism of colours, the artist intuitively engages in a study of the relationship between colour and gesture, as well as the possibilities of colour and painting. Colour becomes here the main vehicle of conveying these frail sensations. The newest works by the artist displayed in the exhibition function as nostalgic testimonies of a time when we could feel the wind’s pulse and filter the light with the blinds of clouds, the acid green of trees was infinite, while the air was sweet like bird’s milk. If they are indeed image-spells, painted back then, they can come true tomorrow.

Jogintė Bučinskaitė

* The exhibition is part of the SUMENĖK cultural route