Artist's Statement
The richly layered compositions of Rimas Čiurlionis’ oil paintings express the interaction and relation of color and form. It is difficult to determine from where one form or another arises, both rational and emotional are side by side. It can be a memory or a fascination or allusion, a manifestation of traditions or influences. Each person is an impulse to another. The same is true for an artwork. And the relation between the work and the viewer appears between them as in the meeting of two fields that are able to either augment the other or to destroy it.
“Art is a means by which we can, for an instant, stop the mind or move it more forcefully in a direction to which we are unaccustomed.” “A work is a reflection of my thought and aspiration which is rewritten and repeated day in and day out in a different quality, at times perceiving that it is the infinite, which joins me to everything, which changes me and which I am changing.”
Biography
Rimas Čiurlionis was born in Kaunas, Lithuania. He studied painting and graphic design at the Stepas Zukas Art College. After completing his studies he was employed for eleven years in the restoration of frescoes at the baroque period Pazaislis Monastery outside Kaunas. In 1992, Čiurlionis came to the United States and settled in the Chicago. He has participated in many solo and group exhibitions throughout Europe and the United States and his work is included in many public and private collections both here and abroad.