How did you begin your artistic journey? Did you always want to be an artist?
In May this year, it will be 10 years since I first started painting. On the one hand, I could intellectualize this event and summarise how it happened. I could say that back in the spring of 2011, I had an amazing chance to spend almost two weeks in a meditation retreat in Tuscany, Italy. When I came back home, my creative juices burst out, and I started painting, to the surprise of friends and family. But on the other hand, the story of the birth of my art is much more delicate and complex. Just look at a butterfly that one day comes out of her cocoon. Taken out of the context, this looks like a standalone event. It’s beautiful, it’s surprising – but all that we notice is the sudden birth of a beautiful butterfly. We don’t know how much time it took her to go through all of the transformation phases, what happened when she was a caterpillar and sitting in her cocoon. Did she know that she was a butterfly when she was a caterpillar? Or did she become a butterfly later? Something similar can be said about the birth of my art.  One day, it just burst into my life as an answer to my search for inner joy, but actually, it must have been simmering inside of me for many years, calling me back to my soul, to who I really am.

I come from a family of musicians, singers, and healers – a family of very creative and sensitive people who were not able to express their gifts fully and freely due to the historical context. I am definitely not the first one in my family to have received the talents of artistic self-expression, imagination and intuition. But I am certainly one of the first people in my family to express them to the world, to have my creative voice flowing freely. I dedicated my painting “Ancestral song” to the awareness of all the richness that comes before us to our ancestors’ honouring and our roots.

Ancestral song, acrylic on canvas, 100×120 cm, www.uslada.art

My art was both something new and unexpected, and yet it emerged as a well-hidden part of myself waiting to be born, waiting to fly out as a butterfly out of her cocoon. And the mysterious thing is that when I made my first painting, my style was already there – refined, rich in colour and form and quite complete. I felt thrilled to share the results of my first work in social media, and just one year after starting to paint, I had my first exhibition. About six months later, I met a Belgian philosopher and art writer named Marcel Paquet, who wrote numerous books about such artists as René Magritte, Fernando Botero, Joan Mir and others. At the time, he had an art gallery in Biarritz, France. He came from Biarritz to Belgium to discover my art, and our first meeting happened at my house near Brussels. What followed after that was an exchange of emails, in which I sent him a photo of each of my new paintings, which resulted in him writing back what he thought and felt about my art. Our friendship lasted for about one and a half years until he passed away in 2014. Before his death, he wrote an essay about my art in French. His thoughtful support and encouragement and his beliefs in my talents have played a vital role during my artistic path to date.

Please tell us about your latest project.
I’d like to mention a couple of things. One is a series of sculptural paintings called Hidden Jewel. These are eight small paintings, 40 x 40 cm each, with many sculptural elements and feathers. I had always used a lot of texture in my art, but this is the first time I took it to another level. This series symbolizes our inner beauty, which often remains dormant or undiscovered, unknown even to ourselves. Each of us has a hidden jewel deep inside.

Hidden Jewel series, diptych 1, www.uslada.art

Another project is my recent partnership with a global environmental charity TreeSisters. It’s a women-led organization that runs many reforestation projects in the Tropics. Nature is a huge inspiration for my art, and I want to give back to the Earth. I am hoping to support TreeSisters and what they do through the sales of my art.

Who inspires you? Maybe you have a favourite artist?
The biggest source of inspiration for my art is the force of life itself. It’s the joy of being alive on Earth and being able to admire the astonishing beauty of its nature. My inspiration comes from living life freely, accepting it fully, with all its challenges and blessings. Many people have told me that my art brings them joy and that it’s very life-affirming. This is very true, but to reach the state of joy, I often travel through an entire spectrum of human emotions. This way, the joy is really authentic. It’s deep, and it’s a state discovered through a lot of depth, shadow and challenges. But it’s always there, no matter what, and it’s always available to those who are willing to notice.I feel extremely connected to music – and oftentimes, I believe that my paintings are music taken into physical form. I am a big fan of electronic music and have a huge list of DJs and producers whose work I am passionate about.
Another source of my inspiration is nature. My paintings are full of symbols of nature – fish, flowers, oceans, birds – that express various aspects of our human nature. Growing up, I spent most of the year in the city of Riga, but every summer, my grandmother, who was a biology teacher, brought me to her small cottage not far from the Baltic Sea, about 35 kilometres north of Riga. I have always felt deeply connected to the beautiful Latvian forests with their many serene lakes and their wild blueberries. The air’s perfumed scent, an exquisite mixture between the salty seawater and pine trees, is an essential part of me.

Tat Tvam Asi, acrylic and Murano glass on canvas, 100×140 cm, www.uslada.art

My favourite artist is Marc Chagall. I don’t know how many times I stood in front of his paintings in the state of deep meditation, but every time I find some new dimension in his work, that moves me deeply. The last time I saw his paintings was in October 2020 in the Chagall Museum in Nice and at the Maeght Foundation in Saint Paul de Vence, and again, they took me on an almost shamanic journey into invisible realms. There’s so much freedom, joy, and an incredible mastery of colour that calls me every time I look at Chagall’s paintings.

As far as we know, you are not only a painter but also a poet? What do you write about?
Indeed, sometimes I write poems. Although Russian is my mother tongue, I mostly write in English. The themes of my poems often echo what I portray in my paintings, but sometimes texts are born just like that, from feeling emotional about something or feeling inspired. My art has a very important spiritual dimension to it, and I love to explore the mystical aspects of life and the human soul both in my paintings and poems. In terms of creative process, writing poems is very different from painting. It’s like I have to “catch” the words when I hear them. I’ve been very intuitive and extra-sensory from a very early age, and I remember myself always creating futuristic sci-fi stories. It was mainly prose, but I love exploring poetry these days. I also – finally – started writing in Russian, but at the moment, I have several half-written poems that I still need to finish.

What is the mission of art for you?
Art’s mission is to show us the truth about ourselves and mirror our soul back to us. Even if the art world works around definitions a lot – defining artistic styles, defining artistic periods throughout history, I think that true art’s mission is to show us that we are all free beyond any definitions and labels. We’re free to express ourselves beyond any norms that are accepted by the society. Art gives us permission to be free, to be a free thinker, to go beyond categories and labels – and with that, art can transform society and move us collectively to a whole new level.
And of course, another very important mission of art is to bring people together, to serve as a catalyst of human encounters – something that we have all been missing so much over the past year.

Does 21st-century digitalization pose a threat to art?
I think that many aspects of digitalization are likely to make the lives of many artists and art collectors much easier. For example, I think that authenticity certificates hosted on the blockchain will make it so much easier to track original art. They will give so much more power to artists as crucial figures active in the art market. For the rest, I think that the main danger that I see is our collective illusion that we have somehow fallen into over the past year that online art fairs, exhibitions and events can replace real-life art experiences.

What does presence on the Internet entail for you?
My main internet presence if first of all, about having a good website. I use it as my portfolio that I send to galleries and art collectors, and in most cases, it is enough to give them an idea of what I do. Most people would be able to make a quick decision about whether they want to see my art or not in real life. So, my site is a bridge between my art and those who will see it at some point. It’s an invitation to discover it. And this is what happened when I met philosopher Marcel Paquet – I first sent him a link to my site (which was very simple at the time), and based on that, he made a decision to travel from the South of France to Belgium to see my art.
Of course, I also share my art on social media, but I go on and off there and don’t really spend too much time showcasing my work.

Does having a .art domain help you broaden your geographical reach?

I think the main advantage of a .art domain for me is to signal very clearly what I do, to signal that I am an artist. I used to have a .com site in the past, but it really did feel too commercial. I am certainly not a company. I am an artist, so a .art domain fits me perfectly. In terms of geographical reach, .art is very universal, and I think it corresponds very well to my international outlook.

Tell us about what is next. Are you planning any new projects in the nearest future?
My biggest plan at this moment is to continue tapping into my inner force and not give in to the lockdown freeze around me. My life-affirming art needs a vibrant life around me in order to be born, and without music, festivals, and travel, it’s very challenging for me to stay wildly creative and productive. That said, I had an amazing chance to travel to Brazil at the end of last year and subsequently made many sketches that I am about to turn into paintings. Brazil really conquered my heart with the beauty of its flora and its people’s warmth – it really brought me back to life. I am still tapping into that trip’s energy – it gave me a huge reservoir of inspiration that is giving birth to a new series of paintings.

THE BLITZ

  • Favourite painter Marc Chagall
  • Favourite book Delta of Venus by Anais Nin
  • Colour or form Color
  • Favourite music for creativity Track “Love on a Real Train” by Tangerine Dream (State Azure Rework), Ukrainian producer ArtBat, and the Italian duo Tale of Us.
  • Love or art? Both, because these are just the two sides of the same coin.

About the artist

Uslada is an artist born in Latvia and living in Belgium. She taps into the flow of life to create her paintings, sensual and exuberant. Her artistic style is a truly unique blend of colour, texture and intricate shapes, which portray the magnificence of the Universe and the beauty of all of us in it. Uslada finds her inspiration in a large array of things. Her source of creativity is the beauty and sacredness of nature and its astonishing colours – both the quiet palette she grew up surrounded by during her childhood near the Baltic Sea, as well as the exotic warmth of vibrant colours she encounters during her travels to faraway lands. She is also inspired by a large spectrum of different art styles, forms and techniques, including Asian filigree, Venetian glasswork, chern (чернь) and gold that are widespread in Russian art, to name a few. Philosopher and art writer Marcel Paquet, who knew and wrote about Magritte, Botero, Calder and Mir, dedicated one of his last essays to her art.

To know more about Uslada, have a look at her .art website and her Instagram under @uslada.art.