WATER AND COLOUR
Aleksandra Šļahova
The power of springtime waters, so deep and swift of pace. Such are the associations stirred by Aleksandra Šļahova’s watercolours. Dualism of colour, evident in stark contrasts between muted and bright hues, is strikingly direct in carrying the artist’s message to the audience. The viewer observes and sees a story, a conversation that is struck when colour meets water. This exchange spills onto paper as a letter about things felt, experienced, collected and, ultimately, shared with the audience. The artist is free in her manipulations with water and colour. She lets the currents of emotion flow cross large and small watercolour fields, pastures and meadows, running into oceans seen and imagined, pouring out into wide, open spaces, epitomizing the overwhelming power of nature itself. Over the years, the artist’s creativity has been focused on contemplation of the world, which she sees as inherently bright and beautiful. Her works are depictions of seen or imagined landscapes, natural and household objects, living beings or natural phenomena, often deliberately magnified or compressed, the better to capture their purpose and meaning. Undeniably, the artists’ works reveal her emotional core, her perspective and way of thinking, the mass of her feelings and emotions at a given moment, rooted in experience, memories and optimism about the future.
Artist, long-term professor of Daugavpils University, doctor of pedagogical science Aleksandra Šļahova was born in the town of Dagda in Krāslava district. After graduation from Dagda Secondary School, life took her to Belarus, where she graduated from the Arts Faculty of Vitebsk Pedagogical Institute. Her career at Daugavpils University began in 1994. She was head of the Arts Department from 1996 through 2006 and dean of the Faculty of Music and Arts from 2006 through 2010. Aleksandra Šļahova has participated in many international conferences and produced more than 90 scientific articles.
The artist exhibits her work since 1975 both in Latvia and abroad. Her watercolours have been displayed in Vitebsk and Polock (Belarus), Milano (Italy), Dusseldorf (Germany) and elsewhere.
