“Shadowless Spring Day” captures a unique spring moment in Kurzeme, where cloudless skies cast no shadows, rendering the earth brighter than the heavens. Using spectral oils, this work distills the viscous memory of that light into a flowing blend of blues, oranges, and pinks. The absence of detail and form transforms the composition into a conscious emotional reflection of nature’s rare harmony.

Concept Statement

Victoria Matison’s recent body of work, created during winter nature studies in 2025, represents a deeply personal exploration of the visual world, undertaken as a training ground for both eye and spirit. These oil paintings—spanning abstract geometric arrangements like “Winter Contemplation,” vibrant floral still lifes like “Blossoming Silence,” and earlier abstractions such as “Three Stages of Life,” “Shadowless Spring Day,” and “Nature of the Light”—are rooted in the residual traces of observed landscapes and moments. Using spectral oils, often enhanced with gold and silver paint, she distills these impressions into flowing, weightless compositions that defy gravity and conventional structure.

Her approach is guided by love rather than judgment, eschewing social polemics or conflict to focus on the undiscovered beauty within nature and light. The brushstroke becomes a reality, co-creating nature in a deliberate yet seemingly spontaneous manner, where the absence of detail invites viewers into a meditative realm. Inspired by reed thickets, shadowless spring days in Kurzeme, nocturnal city glow, and the resilience of Ukraine, her work reflects themes of human endurance, renewal, and the interplay of light and darkness. This collection celebrates the infinite possibilities of the visual world, encouraging contemplation of its fluid boundaries and hidden harmonies.

Vika Matison is a Latvian painter working primarily in oil, blending a classical art education with intuitive, contemporary expression. Her work spans lyrical abstraction, emotionally charged still lifes, and portraits, drawing inspiration from nature, light, and historical art to explore the tension between form and atmosphere. Her paintings delve into the essence of memory and emotion through spectral oils, often enriched with gold and silver paint, creating a dynamic interplay that shifts with perspective. Inspired by the residual traces of landscapes—reed thickets swayed by wind and streams, a shadowless spring day in Kurzeme, and the nocturnal glow of city lights—she distills these impressions into flowing compositions, free of detail, where the brushstroke itself becomes a reality, and she, as an artist, co-creates nature.

Though meticulously crafted, she preserves an impression of spontaneity, as if the works emerge organically. The absence of gravity in her paintings defies conventional structure, inviting viewers into a weightless realm of color and light. This deliberate randomness, combined with the liveliness of metallic accents, adds new dimensions, encouraging contemplation of human resilience, the interplay of light and darkness, and the fluid boundaries of the natural world.

Vika Matīson, after graduating from the Jānis Rozentāls Art School and studying painting with Masha Ainbinder (now living in Israel), received her diploma from the Moscow Polytechnic Institute (1996) and chose a distinctive path — one she calls the Way of the Dao, “where no wheel tracks can be found.”

Viktorija teaches painting, works in graphic design, and writes poetry and prose. The large-format works presented at the exhibition align with the tradition of abstract expressionism. In some pieces — particularly the central painting Glory to Ukraine! — a symbolic and even slightly figurative presence emerges. Another direction in her work is small, intimate portraits of friends and loved ones, rendered in a stylized “baroque” and vibrantly expressive manner.

The exhibition “Zem putnu ceļa” / “Under the Bird Path” is a collaborative project and dialogue between two artists of different generations: Silvija Brigita Mežkone (b. 1942) and Viktorija Matīson (b. 1972). Despite differences in age and artistic manner, both artists are united by their refusal to follow easy paths and their commitment to developing a unique personal style rooted in various layers of global culture.

Silvija Mežkone’s artistic formation began in the 1970s — a time of stagnation — when she chose to study not in Latvia, but at the Lithuanian State Institute of Art in Vilnius, graduating in 1970. During that era, the Riga art scene gathered in the legendary Old Town café “Kaza” (“The Goat”), where people discussed the latest in Western painting, film premieres, and the vibrant life of the local bohemia. From the beginning, Mežkone’s works have been imbued with a symbolic and often sacred dimension, filling her figurative compositions with spiritual energy — all while demonstrating masterful control of color and light to influence perception. Her works appeal to the emotions and invite deep reflection, often requiring the viewer to decipher the hidden symbolic message behind each canvas. Alongside more abstract compositions, the exhibition features a series dedicated to crows. These works blend ornithological sketches “from the window” with mystery and symbolism, transforming the birds into messengers from another dimension.

Summer 2024

Exhibition address Riga, Vesetas 7, Gallery “Rietumu” Rietumu bank.

Wellcome to the personal Exhibition by Vika Matison in Riga, “Rietumu Gallery” gallery of the Bank “Rietumu”, from 14.03.16, till 26.03.16. Str. Vesetas 7.

The process of painting is a great happiness to think without words.
Painting, as well as music, opens unexplored properties and abilities of a human – such as the experience of the color and the immersion in space, that occurs during the immersion. Such a magical circle. Oil painting is still not exhausted. It has many tasks, but only life’s experience gives the artist sometimes an opportunity to feel and understand this wonderful perspective.
Such experience helps to recognize the unconsciousness of a fashionable «curiosities art», craftiness and cynicism of the artistic «beau monde» and emptiness, that hides sometimes behind the ambitious art projects…