Willpower and Vision
about Ieva Bluma`s artist bio and paintings by Danish art critic Ole Lindboe
If art is good and pure, it commands us to look at reality on a different plane. It is hard to walk unaffected past a good picture unless you are an ignoramus. A good picture always leaves an imprint in the mind of a beholder. In the near term and in the long term. Art is a new and potentially astonishing.
When we speak about the good pictures, the artist will to create something new and different plays an important role. Talent alone does not do it.I t takes willpower and visionary ability to push the talent towards the finished artistic expression. The artistic temperament has to be focused to find its own form and the artist needs a vision about the pictures to come.
All this is evident when speaking about Latvian-Danish artist Ieva Bluma (b.1975). Her talent is exuberant and her will to make a statement with her art is impressive. She trained at art school and art college in Riga, Latvia in the early 1990´s and kick-started her impressive career in her native country back in 1997 and 1998 exhibiting drawings and sculptures. But she wanted more to get out in the world to test her art and its viability among a wider audience. In 1998 she was awarded Danish Cultural Institute grant to come to Denmark and make a graphic book with 2 Danish artists and a group exhibition in Copenhagen. In 1999 she was awarded Nordic Council of Ministers grant to make her first solo exhibition in Copenhagen. She got success and since 2000 Ieva lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark. She has successfully exhibited her works at galleries in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Riga, Rom, New York, London and many Danish business companies.
There are many ways to interpret Ieva Bluma`s pictures . You might detect a strong longing for harmony and solitude in her early pictures. Her works are beautiful patterns and contrasting colours. It is obvious that this artist finds inspiration in nature and its reigning forces. And still Ieva Bluma wanders in a wondrous abstract and picturesque no-mansland where only fantasy is the limit. Shapes and colours intertwine and dissolve, floating musically.
And underneath it all you detect defiance wildness. You often find this peculiar mix of restlessness and harmony in the same painting. It is if the picture constantly is on a verge of tipping over and turning to something quite different. Each picture reassembles some kind of metamorphosis. But beauty is ever present as a fragile spirituality.
In her later pictures the artist has taken some giant strides towards a more open and untamed painting style. Past aspirations after harmony has been replaced by a far more dynamic, restless and intractable idiom. The pictures are more lively and detailed than in the past. A new fire is smouldering. Small explosions and musical movements are stirring as when a musician begins to improvise over a theme and let the notes move of their own accord.
The titles of Ieva Bluma`s paintings are keys to her special universe “Wings of Eternity” , “Human Universe” - signalling that she by intuition is tracking down the forces governing an understanding of life and art. They also signal that she is deeply concerned with the forces governing mans fate.
Hence her art speaks to the mind as well as the senses. Her pictures might appear exotic and strangely loaded with feelings. As if they came from different planet with hidden messages for everybody.
They vibrate from internal life. You feel you have to come back to the pictures constantly to make sure what their message is. Ieva Bluma`s pictures are poetic, ethereal, transient and floating. Like kind of picturesque poems that strike a mood or a note and where the interpretations are numerous.
She employs the entire colour palette, but gently and with feeling. Shapes and colours come together in a symphony. Something resembling human forms and faces crop up only to disappear fast.
Her ability to elicit the secrets of colours is unsurpassed. It seems as if she paints with magic fingers that unearth hitherto unknown shapes and colour combinations.
Ieva Bluma`s pictures are like kind of map of places that yet to be discovered. She is pathfinder who continuously travels new roads to expose the hidden connections between man and cosmos. It is done beautifully. And everybody should take the opportunity to participate in this journey of exploration. In that sense Bluma`s vision is an impressive guide . However, one never knows what pops up round next corner.
Ole Lindboe is a Danish art critic and writer and founder of The Danish Art Magazine (Magasinet Kunst)
A unified body of work
about Ieva Bluma paintings by New York art critic Dorothy Roatz Myers
When not completely bowled over by the initial impact of Bluma`s art one is made to think.
When ones mind eye is thus engaged, imagination comes into play and viewers interpret the imagery in accord with there understanding, experience and personal preferences.
The to departures from the customary style that are included indicate fruitful experimentation and development within her idiom-the pictorial expression light and dark simultaneous contrast, scale indicated by size and variation in imagery of complementary colours linearly confined some floating free on frontal planes, others interlocked and /or layered to indicate depth, negative space created by solid black backgrounds that unify the compositions. Ieva Bluma`s mathematically logical mind - set is obvious. Combinations of line, colour and tone define image as she plays off colour against colour and shape against shape in the painterly departures from her pseudo-geometric styles as well.
Activity and complication abounds. Clean raw colour prevails although and tertiary colours provide variety amid the hard-edge compositions. Fluid open brushwork in the two departures impart the volatile relief of action painting to an otherwise static exhibition. Ieva Bluma`s sculpture and graphics similarly created with simplicity and strength. Signs and symbols are assembled to create a whole. In addition to the above, her art speaks for itself in the same forthright manner that characterises her personality. Immediacy and impact is a keynote of Ieva Bluma`s oeuvre.
Ieva Bluma is decidedly not a “closet artist” At the age of 22 she appeared in European art scene in Riga, Latvia with her solo exhibition of drawings “Wonderland in colours” and a year later was invited through Danish Cultural Institute to do her solo exhibition in Copenhagen, Denmark and she lives and works in Copenhagen since. In age 28 she had her solo exhibition in Montserrat gallery, 584 Broadway, New York .
Her work in all forms and mediums are now appreciated worldwide .
The spark of artistic talent that existed in four-year-old Ieva Bluma today illuminates her consciousness enabling her to create works that encompass the art field from painting, drawing, graphics, photography, sculptures, ceramics to animation and films.
All this finds Ieva Bluma on her life experience as artist and human to experiment , develop and innovate. Her will be a career to track for a star will continue to rise.
Dorothy Roatz Myers, New York City
New York Art Critic