About the works: 

     "Jurgita Nakos has been trained as an architect. After a decade of designing interior spaces, her quest for creative freedom has brought her into the field of painting. It was a brave move, because she has not opted for abstract (non-objective and non-figurative) expression, but chose portraiture, a genre of great complexity.  
     Portrait painting during all periods was a special realm of artistic creation, as it mirrors best not only the prevailing idea of a human being as an individual or a particular mind-set, but also captures the social setting with its hierarchy of values as well as a cultural and intellectual milieu. 
     It is also true that the portrait is nothing homogeneous, ranging from grand official representations to informal and intimate likenesses in reflection of diverse modes of relationship between an individual and society.
      Jurgita Nakos’ approach to the world and to artistic practice is intuitive and highly personal. Her choice of an expressive informal portrait is not surprising: it is a means to show her personal take on her time and the world around her.    
       The artist lives in Great Britain and is immersed in the country’s multinational and multicolour society. People of diverse cultures, race, age, social status fluctuate before her eyes like patterns in a kaleidoscope tube. From this complex flow, the artist seems to extract ‘action stills’ centering on a particular protagonist, drawing attention to his or her unique features, gestures, clothes, props. She employs detail sparingly, but even that is enough to render some characteristic features associated with one or another type. Yet every time, her protagonist’s state of mind and the intimate relationship between the sitter and the viewer is at the heart of her work. 
      Informal rendition of her sitters determines also the composition of Nakos’ paintings. Three-quarter or half-length figures usually occupy the entire plane of a painting with only as much background as needed to create an atmosphere or setting.  Most of the portraits are cast against a neutral background, with a detail or prop to hint at the portrayed individual’s social niveau, profession or origin.  However, it is the background where the artist expresses herself most freely and shows her passionate temper. Her expressive brushwork rips the image from a two-dimensional plane and instils it with life.  Though most portraits are rather static, the figures in them do not look stiff.  True, they often look aloof, detached from their surroundings, in the state of loneliness, the inevitable condition of contemporary world. The artist seems to observe the seething diversity of the world and collect impressions; she stores them in her memory treasure chest from which they re-emerge onto her canvases as signs of her personal experience." 

Dr. Danute Zoviene 

Member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA)

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