Marija Reikalas is a painter and printmaker based in Porto. Her bold, hence intricate style in earthy colours and natural shapes brings the spectator to a space between reality and a threshold of a dream.
M. Reikalas holds MA in Visual Culture. She studied at IADE Creative University (MA, Lisbon, Portugal) and at Art Academy of Vilnius (BA, Vilnius, Lithuania), and now conducts her personal studio practice in Porto, Portugal. Her art includes painting (canvas and murals), linocut printing, mixed media and music videos. She’s always on a pursuit for new techniques to experiment and to incorporate in her artistic practice.
Born in rural Lithuania, Marija Reikalas dwells in her reveries, where pale brown colour palette of naked trees from Baltic winter collides with tropical scenarios. With a touch of poetic impermanence, in her artwork one can find a scintillating moonlight ray on a dewy surface of a plant, an eerie stroke of a bird wing in the depth of murmuring forest, metaphorical human-animal connection, mythology and visceral memories—all transcended by the deep sense of wilderness.
Inspired by plants, their life cycle, connection to the subconscious, the artist mimics flora’s assimilation of various lost objects and integration into one’s life. You’ll be presented to the world of moss, weeds and ivies, plants with eyes, personalities and a secret story to tell. Negating the law of duality, Mother Nature—equally loving and austere towards her children, a space just as comforting as threatening at the same time.
