Līga Ķempe

Līga Ķempe
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Līga Ķempe

Born 1975 in Liepāja and acquired her first education in art in her native city. In 1995 she graduated from the Liepāja Secondary School of Art with the speciality of ceramic artist. In 2003 she graduated from the Art Academy of Latvia with a master’s degree in art from the Faculty of Visual Plastic Art.

She participates in group and thematic exhibitions in Latvia and abroad since 1999. Personal exhibitions are arranged since 2002 at various galleries in Latvia, Denmark, Belgium and France. Her works are held in the collections of UPB and the Museum of Liepāja, Matti Milius in Tartu and in private possession in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Russia, Belgium, Denmark, France, England, Portugal, Germany, Finland, Sweeden, Norway and the USA.

 

I am a woman in her adult years — I wear my years layer upon layer, and every day changes something in my layering. Since my paintings tell stories about myself, the pictures live alongside me. I like being a mother. Intricacies of daily life, tending to children and cooking — these are all part of the preperation to paint. Every single day is the same and that’s my lifestyle. A static balance, witch simultaneously moves and changes me. Also in painting.

My skill is a component within my talent at living. My joie de vivre, naturalness and courage are my three every-day colours, overlain by the copies of every event and mood. My life is a painting coloured by adventure after adventure. What sort of painting? Maybe one painted in the oil of laughter. On the canvas of experience and in the tints of seconds. I bring heavy overtones into everyday scenes and I blow ponderous flesh into the lightest fluff.

My heroines are not proper ladies. But they are happy. I dare to be improper. And I make fun of things. I adore beings that represent not weight category, but the extraodinary. I study, imagine and admire my fat women, whom I address as the ladies.

I picture the mornings and evenings, threading them like beads onto the thread of time. At a picture gala I try them on and then strike them out of my personal fashion. Only to work up new miracles in my factory of painting myself. I dilute the classic dance of art with a naïve curtsy.

My influence — everyday life. I am. My essence vibrates. I go to where my nose points me. What is in my mind is at the tip of my brush. Intensively attractive directness is my priority. Art allows me to see what is invisible in the world we see around us. I take the painterly subjects that I meet in everyday life and dress them into a prosaically natural environment of light and shadow, decorative elements and bright spaces of colour. Adding layer upon layer of colour on canvas, obstinately oldfashioned, I get carried away with the classical technique of oil painting, where the textures reveal a distinct expression of personal brush strokes and colour symbolism. I select the hues that are pleasing to me from the wide pallet of colours. It’s a conversation between the hues on a canvas. My artistic signature. Flat painting joined with a pliable form. A laborious process. Unpremeditated images of fantasy and reflections of imagination in the frame of daily life, a moment caught in the long flow of time, rousing feelings and emotions. Painting fascinates me — I condense stories in the flat planes and small faces and artfully transmit them to a three-dimentional environment.

Painting is not eternal, it is infinite.

Artworks
contemporary art
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