Baltic Sea (2010) Painting by Natalie Levkovska

“Baltic Sea”, oil on canvas/silver leaves, painting from the series of works "Sea and Gull".
"Sea and Gull" is perhaps my favorite and most non-commercial project. But it happens that the author likes, does not always resonate with the public.
It all started in my youth. I guess that most young, intelligent people at one time read Richard Bach's book “The Story of a Seagull named Jonathan Livingston”. At sixteen, it became a kind of event for me too.
Then there was a lot of everything, and I remembered the book much later, returning in 2009 from London to Vilnius. The book served as leaven, but the basis was still my love of the sea.
Starting from three years, every year my mother and I had a summer holiday on the Baltic coast. Have you ever swum in the Baltic Sea? If you grew up, like me in the Baltic states, you probably know the peculiarities of the swimming in our sea. In summer, the water here rarely warms up above + 17 ° C, and the most excitement is the swimming in a storm, when you, together with other people screaming from the cold and rapture, jump through the rumbling waves. When the water warms up to 18-19 ° C by the middle of summer, the sea calms down into calm and blooms. To plunge and swim, you need to wiggle your knee in cold water for a long, long time, by the time you get to deep water, your body will be covered with goosebumps from the cold and bravely dive into the burning water, turn around, run back to the beach, bask in the dune on warm white sand. Much later, I found out that the sea can be warm and that you can’t get out of it for hours. That it also can be a fabulous azure color. Yes, the world turned out to be many beautiful and warm seas. :) And yet my attachment to our harsh sea is great: with its cold-steel sky, piercing wind, an endless white strip of sand that goes into the infinite, curved, tar-smelling pine trees, soaring lonely seagulls. From all this, a local character has developed, including mine.
Having returned from England in 2009, I plunged into myself with a question, but what is next: what matters to me, what I like, what I want to express? I realized that, as at 16, I still feel detached from the pack and that one of the most pleasant childhood memories is walking along the seashore. This is what I decided to paint.
The series of works was painted by new and not typical for me technique: small volumetric strokes of oil paint, similar to pieces of mosaics. With different lighting, they shimmer and create a special three-dimensional effect.
It may not feel inner peace in the works, but this is something that I do not like at sea, I don’t like calm.

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Baltic SeaPointillismBaltic CoastSilver SkyJapan Style Art