10 Questions with Rūta Matulevičiūtė

Rūta Matulevičiūtė is a painter and interdisciplinary artist. Member of the Lithuanian Artists' Association since 2019, she has an MFA degree in Painting from the Vilnius Academy of Arts, and is a member of the Lithuanian Artists' Association. The artist has presented two solo exhibitions in Vilnius: SPHERE in Gallery THE ROOM in 2018 and Atlantis in St. John's Street gallery in 2021. She was a finalist at The Young Painter Prize contest in 2019, and the following year R. Matuleviciute presented her performance HOT Salon at Art Vilnius'20 art fair. After graduating with her Master's, she and her five colleagues co-founded the artist-run space and studios "Tapytoju studijos" (Lithuanian for Painter's studios), hosted open studios, and presented several projects there, including the "Painter's studios in Vilnius Culture Night". Now Ruta Matuleviciute is creating in an individual studio located near "Fairytale Park" in Vilnius.

rutavm.com | @ruta_matuleviciute

ARTIST STATEMENT

The main goal of Ruta Matuleviciute's work is to create the impression of the infinite beauty of life for the viewer. Artist's method is consciousness-based creativity with a focus on personal development. She is always looking for a more fundamental and holistic approach to an idea. For this reason, she focuses on meditation, psychology, ancient traditions, and, most importantly, the broad Baltic mythology rooted in Indo-European culture. Lithuania was the last country in Europe to keep the ancient Baltic religion alive, which is why Lithuanian legends are still alive today, hidden beneath the layers of daily life. The more subtle the layers of reality, the more things merge and come together. That's why surrealism and magical realism are the most prominent features in Ruta Matuleviciute's work.

INTERVIEW

First of all, introduce yourself to our readers. What is your background, and how did you start getting involved with art?

My name is Ruta Matuleviciute, and I am a Lithuanian artist. I have an MFA in Painting, but painting is not the only medium I create in. Before art academy, I graduated from music school two times, first with a Violin major and the second time with a Cello major.
My first experience when visual art appeared to be the most prominent in my very creative childhood was when I got inspired to write a book about a family of bears at age five or six. I created a story, but there was one problem - I did not yet know how to write, and there was no way I could have recorded this idea. Nevertheless, I glued together several sheets of printing paper with tape, divided every page in half, and filled every half of each page with the story in drawings, leaving the other half empty so I could write down the story when I learned to do that. In the first grade, being already educated, I wrote down the story following my illustrations. The plan was a success. At the age of seven years old, I made my first self-published storybook.

How would you describe yourself as a person and as an artist?

I was always a dreamer, looking for the magic in the world: a nerd, bookwork, the goth of school, the weird introvert. I had few friends, but they were true, and the friendship is still alive up to this day. My parents knew me as a sensitive, artistic child. I did not like school, and I felt liberated by art. I would draw elves holding swords and riding dragons during lessons and get scolded for doing that.
In the sixth grade, when we installed the internet at home, I started printing out articles about astral projection techniques, Tarot, mythology, and Ancient Chinese and Japanese philosophy. I read them during lessons hiding them under the math book.
The fantasy, stories, and fairytales affected my worldview and art. I was always looking for something beyond this world. I waited for the invitation letter to Hogwarts at the age of eleven, I read Lithuanian author Jurga Ivanauskaite's books about her journeys in Tibet and India, and I could not even imagine that one day I would actually find a meditation technique that I understand and which works.
After years of searching for myself during my studies in the art academy, I started practicing Transcendental Meditation, and it became a tremendously helpful and important tool in finding my own voice, my own approach, and no longer being afraid to be that different sensitive 'weird' person - as long as I am true to myself.

You mainly work with painting and predominantly focus on surrealism and magical realism. Why did you choose this medium? And what does it represent for you?

Painting became a natural way of expression for me as I catch my ideas and inspiration in visual flashes inside my mind. They appear spontaneously while I am going on with my daily activities and keep coming back until I put them on the canvas. While most of the ideas come for paintings, some do for performance art or installations as well. Painting a static two-dimensional work that gains dynamism in the viewer's mind in the form of thoughts or ideas is a true joy. A whole story can be told on a single canvas, with a single portrait. This is a true motivation for me - I want to create pieces that give this empowering feeling, which I get when observing beauty in nature, life, and those ideas that come.
Surrealism and magical realism come from my early years in life. From the time when in a cold room in the village, laying under a thick goose feather blanket, I would listen to my grandmother tell me fairytales, explain to me what is God and what happens after we die, along with the real-life stories of the times when the Soviets occupied Lithuania, and she, as a baby, was once put on top of the blanket in her baby crib, under which her mother hid a partisan during the military checking.

Can you tell us about the process of creating your work? What is your artistic routine when working?

The process of painting starts with a visual idea. I then make photographs, alter them digitally by collaging, cutting, and transforming the pictures, and finally - give them material form on the canvas. This process itself gives many ideas and realizations emerging during this process. I am learning about what the idea meant, in what context it came out, and what I can learn from it.
In some cases, I do not learn the meaning of the painting's idea until I make a whole series and put them together, making a collection that tells its own story. Such a process directly reflects my own state of mind and the collective. Works for the exhibition 'Atlantis' were created just like that - while painting pieces inspired by the atmosphere of Lithuanian fairy tales, I saw them forming one body of work creating its own fragment of mythology.

Your work often refers to Baltic mythology, as mentioned in your statement. What would you like to communicate to the viewers? And how can such ancient traditions speak to today's people?

Knowledge has always been a natural passion of mine. I always search and research vast amounts of it and of a wide range. It is because I want to dig deeper into layers of knowledge underlying the everyday common things. Myths are stories made about those deeper principles of life, which are universal and non-changing. When wise people, sages, understood something about life, they chose to speak about it in allegories, in stories, because examples with narratives are easier to understand and remember rather than scientific papers with complex and specific vocabulary. Yet when you know both, you see the same knowledge in both.
Baltic mythology is just the same - it holds the wisdom on the natural principles of life, but they are told in a language that is understood in a very specific site and cultural context in which I grew up. While I am interested in many different cultures and their heritage, Baltic mythology is my 'home' mythology. By unlocking the stories told by family, I can find a key to every story in the world because they all reach down to the same universal wisdom.

Let's talk about the colors in your paintings. You seem to use a fixed palette. Do these colors have a specific meaning for you? How do you choose them?

Blue color now unifies my recent series of paintings I have been working on for the past two years. Following the old master's technique which uses many layers of underpainting, I adapted it for my work and started making one monochrome layer. It added the outlines and shadows for the works, and a shimmering effect, giving the work an ethereal atmosphere with a slight scent of digital. With time the colors on the following layers started dissolving from my paintings, and I started painting completely blue works. In the past centuries, only royal court artists had blue color in their palletes as the pigment for it was derived from very expensive lapis lazuli. Yet I can make entire series of works that are only painted in blues. It is a royal joy.

How much planning goes into each artwork?

The preparation for the actual painting is usually much longer than the painting process itself. Even though the ideas come spontaneously, I carefully prepare the images using photography and collage. All process is digital up to the point when I take the physical canvas. In the Ancient Chinese ink painting tradition, the artist is a scholar and philosopher wandering in nature and observing its beauty and harmonious processes. This artist does not copy the landscapes as they are, but rather observes them and, when back in their home, creates spontaneously to reflect that beauty and those harmonious processes. I have borrowed some approaches from these ancient sages and adapted them for contemporary experience. After the high technology required and very controlled preparation, I similarly enjoy the painting process as they did - my brushstrokes are few, yet they are exact, and the process is quick and highly spontaneous.

Is there anything else, art-wise, that you would like to experiment with? Any new techniques or mediums you would like to incorporate into your practice?

Yes. Absolutely. I love learning new techniques for my art, and my most recent interest is digital animation and 3D. I am in the experimenting stage in this, I need to develop lots of skills, but the thought of the combination of traditional painting with digital has a strong gut feeling pulling me on this path. I do not yet know what lies there, but there is a strong attraction. Also, I am always thinking of applying that classical music education to my practice. I have presented only one art performance playing the Cello, but right now, I am thinking about going for digital audiovisual works.

What are you working on right now? Any exciting projects or exhibitions coming up soon?

Right now, I am continuing the blue series, but a bit slower, with more thought and study. I am reading more books, listening to more podcasts, seeing more art, and talking more about it. This is an important phase where I am rethinking and updating my approach to the practice. I want to explore my skills in curation as well, as I feel I have gained a certain skill in finding common and unifying concepts for different works. One of my dreams is an exhibition by TM meditating artists.

And finally, what is your biggest goal for 2022?

My biggest goal for 2022 is to find more peace and happiness in life. Does this sound too simple? Simple is genius. I think these are the most important things that the world needs right now.