Opening of Zane Lūse’s Exhibition “Stories with Happy Endings” on 12/4/2020.

As Ogre was adorned in festive splendor, sparkling with lights, a Christmas tree, and angels, the Ogre History and Art Museum hosted the city’s central cultural event — an exhibition by painter Zane Lūse, titled “Stories with Happy Endings”.

This is Zane Lūse’s tenth solo exhibition, with most of the paintings created in the last four months, making this exhibition even more special.

The clasp of two hedgehogs’ small paws, the human-like gaze of seals, a moth in unexpected sunglasses, large heads with singing mouths on long matchstick necks, a kind bear’s striped sweater in a caraway field — these are just a few fragments that, like colorful glass shards, fall to form patterns in the kaleidoscope’s mirrored walls. And through painter Zane Lūse’s illuminated prisms, they reveal our world, in a way mirroring ourselves, our realities, and our attitudes.

Zane Lūse’s paintings, whose titles also serve as keys to witty narratives, are characterized by a unique imagery. They evoke associations with Alice and falling into Wonderland, where sometimes the living seems so lifeless and the lifeless so alive, where animals can be like humans, and humans like animals. However, unlike the tale of Alice, this is not a fictional story. It is the world in which we live, breathe, think, and just like the hedgehogs depicted by the artist, we choose either to hold hands or to extend our quills for defense or attack.

Often, having expressed herself ironically with brushes and paints on canvases, the artist herself quietly stands behind her distinctive characters, with a humanly warm and subtly philosophical vision, and sometimes sadly, sometimes playfully observes the viewer in front of her paintings. And she smiles, seeing our smiles blossom, because we have seen all living things around us in a new light and realized — we are not alone in this world and most stories have happy endings.

The artist obtained her master’s degree in 2001 from the Department of Figurative Painting at the Latvian Academy of Arts and paints in the classical oil painting technique on canvas. She has been participating in exhibitions since 1999, some of which were shown in Paris.

One of her exhibitions was dedicated to the composer Raimonds Pauls. The paintings were named after his song titles or the most recognizable phrases from his song lyrics, which are dear and familiar to everyone, for example, “Seagulls Talk to Me Again”, “Here is My Homeland”, “Wild Rose”.

In addition to her messages for adult audiences, the painter has also illustrated children’s books (Māra Cielēna’s “On the Way to Christmas”, Rudīte Raudupe’s “Brincis the Cat”, Imants Ziedonis’s “Bear Andrejs’s Tales”), breathing lively spirit into them.