30.11.2023 - 06.01.2024

Galerija "Māksla XO"

Elizabetes iela 14, Rīga, LV 1010

MADARA NEIKENA

Never Fading Light

“Each painting is like a fragmented memory that I remember as a short, moving picture with possible probabilities. Being elsewhere affects me and leaves an impression on my painting as well. It cannot be overlooked and hidden that the landscapes I paint are not found here but far in the North. When I was a small child, I drew the Moomin troll from the books of Swedish-speaking Finnish author, novelist, painter, illustrator and comic strip author Tove Jansson. The books I read in my early childhood have had a great impact on me until today, although that naivety and dreaminess fades and crumbles with time, as the possibility is allowed that another ideal world of dreams is possible, like an unfading light that we see and yet do not see, but are able to feel.
The Nordic countries across the Baltic Sea have been a great curiosity for me. The desire to get there and see if it is the same as what I read in the books, stories about trolls, the harshness of nature, mountains, fjords and the Norwegian cousine, especially the brown cheese and aurora borealis... And so step by step I came to one, to another and yet another field of unfading light, allowing for the possibility to be, as it was, is and will be...” Madara Neikena, 2023.

Madara Neikena belongs to the new generation of Latvian painters. She is one of the few artists who continue painting a la prima in the plain air. Her attention is attracted to marine and seaside - the interaction of colour and light, which young artist converts into a vague landscape with a mediative nature and artistic creation and perception level. Madaras Neikena’s works are characterized by the lightness of colour and landscape, minimalism and laconic pictorial expression, where the composition of the paintings and the emotional message are sometimes drawn with just a few lines.
Madara Neikena (1988) graduated from the Painting Department at the Art Academy of Latvia (2015). In 2014, she received “SEB Scholarship in Painting” (Latvia) and “Premio Marina di Ravenna 2014” (Italy). Since 2010, she has participated in several group exhibitions in Latvia and abroad and has organized 8 solo exhibitions. The paintings of Madara Neikena are in the ROCHE Latvija Art Collection (Riga, Latvia). Madara Neikena lives and works in Riga, Latvia.