Born 1957 in Šilute. Has finished Mosaic and Fresco studies in the State Art Institute of Lithuania in 1982. In 1987 has started painting.
Budrytė studied the fresco in the Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts and was taught by Sofija Veiverytė to create compositions of monumental wall – paintings featuring solemn allegoric scenes of work. She created a fresco ensemble in the Antakalnis Hospital and Clinics right after her studies. However, soon afterwards the huge walls with schematic figurative scenes were replaced with chamber painting, flooded with personal images. The only trace of the fresco studies is revealed by the generalisation of form, taken from the old art.
The liberating impulse given by the paintings of Mykolas Šalkauskas seen in the city of Kaunas a few decades ago had greater impact upon Inga Budrytė than her teachers. From the paintings of Šalkauskas she took over the fragmentary display of reality, where the motives are being generalized and become spacious laconic signs, made up of a few brightly coloured surfaces which are defined by outlining lines. Budrytė varies those main principles in her own way, adjusting them to define the themes closest to her. Also the artists mixes reality and vision in her own paintings but she does it more intimately dreamy way than her „extramural“ teacher.
Budrytė‘s paintings depict her single life, the slow flowing of days as a state of fullness, a medium for dreams and fantasy. Returning from work, a walk in a park, a visit to a bar become special events, known and unknown people – exotic characters and things in a room turn into mysterious objects. The daily life puts on a masquerade costume. Men and women put on masks. A fat man with moustache squeezes into a lady – bird’s costume. A tall, elegant woman covers herself in feathers; others dress up like jungle dwellers, pretend to be magicians. Those taking part in a festive parade present themselves in carnival furs of mythic beasts and animals. Figures sitting around a desk in a room hide themselves behind long nose – shaped masks. Cats who are given anthropomorphic features turn into playful beings.
Nature and interior go through no less of a metamorphosis. Space is being reduced to one or two intersecting colourless (only black and white) or brightly coloured surfaces, which mark the most important features of a landscape or a room. A few savvy details are drawn in outlines.
Budrytė paints and draws in the same time. Unexpected bright combinations of yellow, blue and green light change places with deadened red, green or rose, though sometimes they are restricted to black and white only. The figures and things display in silhouettes give long colourful shadows. Trees and plants are drawn in ornament touches while not living things get material vitality. For example, a tabletop displays sharp thorns and office tools spring to vitality of small and large toys.
Budrytė combines daily – life and fantasy motives in her own way, she plays with relations between colours and sizes, embodying her images with mystery. On the surface the figures and things are laid out like a rebus. Whenever I look at Budrytė’s paintings, I have a feeling that in a moment I will be able to answer a riddle that felt being out there for a long time. It looks like it is possible to read her drawings like words but it is still not possible to make a comprehensible story. There is no code to decipher the images which draw the spectators into a game but at the same time entertain and confuses them.
The drawings of Ina Budrytė are easy to read as stories but they conceal memories of a stranger and have so many meanings, that the only thing left to the spectators is to adore them and be surprised why is it not possible to answer such a seemingly everyday riddle.
Raminta Jurėnaitė,
Source: MMC
Exhibitions in THE ROOM gallery: