The Golden Woman, 2004, canvas, oil, 130x60 cm

Onutė Juškienė (b. 1979) actively creates and exhibits her works in various exhibitions, participates in plein airs. The artist has been participating in exhibitions since 1997 in Lithuania and abroad, she has arranged about 30 personal exhibitions. She graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts, Mural painting, but mainly creates works of classic oil on canvas painting.

The artist creation area is wide, animalistic compositions, landscapes, still lifes, portraits,  she paints watercolours. She also creates ceramic figurative compositions, has created monumental works of art (frescoes, sgraffito technique) in public and private spaces.

The influence of art nouveau, art deco, and secession styles is evident in the early drawings. The works are decorative,  dominates asymmetric composition, a wavy, plastic line. Exotic motifs are interwoven with the fairy/mystical world. Ornaments and plant motifs play a very important role in the drawings. Draperies seem to have neither a beginning nor an end, they either break up in space into individual elements, or take on another matter and become a decoration of a building or something. In Onutė's later work, these features are not so obvious and bright, but the flexible, flowing line, plasticity, ornamentation, plant motifs, decorativeness remain the predominant elements of the works.

The artist's paintings are distinguished by a strong academic drawing, and a realistic manner prevails. Therefore, the aforementioned ornamentation, plant motifs, developed art nouveau, art deco stylistics acquire another "resonance" in later paintings; it is no coincidence that in portraits, figurative compositions - women's dresses are abundantly or very minimally decorated with precisely painted elements of flora and often even the figurative compositions themselves are immersed in an ornamental/plant background, in still life - curtains, tablecloths, etc. also decorated with ornamental and plant motifs. It is obvious that Juškienė's work has a strong sense of color and texture, which she skillfully conveys in her works. The materiality of the depicted objects is important in the works, their different textures are extracted in a realistic manner (for example, every hair of an animal's fur is delicately painted, plant petals, stems, leaves, etc.), as if approaching photorealistic painting. Hair and drapery modeling play an important role in figurative compositions, and the aforementioned materiality is also evident here. The landscapes are mostly dominated by flower meadows, rapeseed fields, etc. A landscape is a variety of places seen/recorded

the mosaic that Juškienė composes, constructs in her own way, according to her own vision. The artist also uses elements of the landscape when portraying people, depicting animals in the meadow, etc. Sometimes the artist "cleans" the space and places a cat, hare, bird or still life composition in it. In this way, the viewer's attention is focused on one object, on its materiality, its structure, which the artist analyzes and conveys in detail. Onutė's works have a calm, sometimes elegiac mood. These are works that intertwine a realistic manner with modern features, depicting real and fictional plots, characters that create a calm, quiet atmosphere. The artist's works stand out for their craftsmanship; the selected depicted motifs take the viewer to a space where nothing seems to be happening, but forces him (the viewer) to immerse himself.

Art researcher Rasa Dargužaitė