“Ilze Raudiņa is a painter with a stable though unique style, which sets her apart from other artists. Her paintings are “viewer friendly”, but the fact is that the longer one looks at them, the more they present one riddle after another to the viewer. Each drawing – concrete and with great attention paid to detail – is lightly stylised and employs a wide-ranging colour palette.

 

At first, these drawings make one think that the viewer is presented with an image, which appears “just like in nature” or “as in real life”; however, that first impression is quickly followed by a desire to look deeper, which reveals elements that diverge from a true depiction of nature and instead reveal a world seen from a unique perspective. A consistent sharpness of lines throughout the work draws one’s eye, which keeps the viewer from immediately recognising how the artist has taken a simple painting that tells a story and instead transformed it into an unreal allegoric message.

 

This style is reminiscent of paintings by the old masters and also storybook illustrations, while also combining with “discoveries” that suddenly catch your eye and create a contradictory mood, which is both ironic and a bit uncomfortable. Her painting, which the artist connects with observations in nature and her subjective emotional landscape, preserves the sudden, paradoxical impression left by a moment in time. This work creates intellectually challenging rebuses, which, along with her painting in general, are the result of considerable effort applied over an extended period of time.”

/  Arts critic Vilnis Vējš