“Take a long slow look at the subject, then draw as quickly as the mind remembers it”
Viktoras was a superb minimalist graphic artist. His line is effortless, soaring or sinking in a free flow.
Expression is spontaneous in his quick sketches – be they nudes or Trio of musicians. They express the pulsating rhythm of the music with the positions of their bodies and instruments. Viktoras doesn’t force meaning upon the onlooker.
Those who delight in examining the details of his works are in for a great surprise and realise how much freedom of interpretation he gives the public. This trait is so compatible with his character for he was a most generous man. He also uses a great deal of juxtaposition, in a series of graphic art pictures which are so intriguing.
Take for instance the pen and ink picture Before the Race. The leader in the middle has a set jaw and an authoritarian expression, the two “mates or onlookers” on the left don’t seem too bright and are quite submissive. This is well accentuated with their square heads and forward leaning torsos, while the other two figures on the right side are straight and display a more nonchalant attitude.
Reclining Nude – Pen and ink, 1972
Trio I – Wide nib and ink
Before the Race – Pen and ink, c~1985
“The pen is as mighty as you think it is”
“As a friend I found him totally loyal, honest in art likes and dislikes and why? He would humorously bring me down on earth when my imagination got the better of me. We came both on the same ship “Skaugum” to Australia and had contact with the Lithuanian contingent on board.”
“He liked smoking, and did so for 46 years. Then the day he turned 60, after a habitual daily pack of 20 non-filters, he crumpled up the last packet and never smoked again.”
“He loved helping out the Lithuanian Community in Melbourne with his art. But he never put forward his name for election to the community’s Executive Committee. That was not out of shyness, but rather due to his knowing that his art would serve the community best.”
November 2015
Whimsical Lines
The cliche of an artist is the way they position their subject: a front-on image as if it is a portrait becomes tedious to me, I need to see the activity, no matter how passive it may be, but a nuance of irregularity that the subject holds with every move they make:
Lost wax – lost poly
CASTING: The polystyrene became the wax in casting these sculptures. Sand was packed around the maquettes, liquid metal then poured into the box, melting away the polystyrene, cooling then revealing a metallic version of the original model.
String Theory
By draping a flexible string of cotton thread onto sticky paper, his wonderful heads would begin to emerge:
