Even Out (2023) Painting by Sashka

Born and raised in Klaipeda, Lithuania, this is where my art journey began, on a coastal town in a cold country, where the skies were normally gloomy, energy low and conversation minimal.

The North Eastern European art tutoring culture is rather conservative and focuses majorly on technique. Starting 2003, I began developing my academical art skills in this environment.

My skills got furthered and deepened between 2009 and 2011 with the Graphics & Printmaking course at the Vilnius Arts Academy, with the most useful perspective-shifting class being Composition for one semester with Arūnas Gėlūnas, a philosophy professor (who later became the culture minister), who had studied Japanese sumi-e painting and taught us to bring in brush size, stroke, shape & tone variability, which enriched my library of brush strokes significantly and keeps feeding my art creation to this day.

Having reached academical-art-learning burnout by Summer 2011, I left my quiet & uneventful life in Lithuania for a change of pace in London, UK.

I had switched from constant studying to working different jobs, while keeping art on the background at all times, increasing my desire to create more and more as the frustration with having to do other things for a living built up.

Finally, in 2015 I quit my day job and went into art full time, exploring various artistic income streams, from live portraits to digital logos, to illustration, to workshops.

In late 2015 I partnered with Louis de Trebons to paint signs at Camden Market, which led me into paiting at festivals later and exploring different other ways of applying my painting skills. Louis became one of my biggest influences both emotionally and artistically, bringing in more texture into my art, as well as more expression, colour and later finding that I wanted my art to represent my care for the environment.

During that period of 2015-2021, we left London together and started a farm project in Hungary, where we hosted festivals and workshops in the artistic surrounding of our creation, featuring our own art works and those of our guests. I began exploring more eco-friendly ways of art making, including pigments and egg tempera, pigments and oils, repurposing canvases, using eco mineral paits for home on my painting surfaces.

In 2021, Louis' passing became another pivoting point, forcing physical and spiritual change and greater self-acceptance. It was time to start connecting all the influences and knowledge and weave my own story out of it all.

Today, my fine art is a combination of classical training, expressive bursts of colour and experimentation with paint texture. I aim to use mostly eco-friendly non-toxic recycled/repurposed materials and feature predominantly female figures to tell a visual story.

• Nationality: LITHUANIA
• Date of birth : 1989
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary Lithuanian Artists