I am an artist illustrator based in Rotterdam The Netherlands. I Originally trained in book design at Vilnius Academy of Arts, I later completed a Master's degree in Non-Linear Narrative at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. My recent projects include intimate digital drawings, comics, and community-based projects. I'm interested in storytelling as an ancient, soothing and collaborative act—one that makes room for irrationality, and vulnerability. My personal work is often returning to themes of interruption, longing, and the absurdity of the everyday.

Personal work

Despite to the seeming analogue appearance of these images I draw them digitally on an ipad. I think the austere appearance of the images is also dictated by the minimalism of the chosen medium. The digital is very contained, it doesn't offer an opportunity to relish in the materiality of laying and wallowing in charcoal or graphite on different textures of paper. The process is very controlled, it cannot be smudged accidentally with the back of a hand, the strokes are quite uniform, yet I still am able to seek out other kinds of surprises within this work.

A certain amount of concentration is needed to render these drawings in a way that looks so analogue. I spend time to develop these continuous tones through intricate hatching. The process takes time and I like to spend it observing how resemblances surface and disappear in the clouds of strokes. Different grey gradients overlap and start "glowing" if juxtaposed with deeper greys and whites. The process is about being sensitive to the change and nuance of a couple new strokes can bring. Figuration is very important, but only through mental recollection.

I draw from memory, specifically because then I get to experience a pleasure of slow uncovering, recognising a shape that appears gradually, is sought out not just dictated by a reference. I think that recognition process is much more human when it is based on guessing how a shape should look, I am curious of the shifts and variations that simple motifs can take when they are allowed to contain mistakes and idiosyncrasies of drawing from a mental image. I almost always finish an image in one session - rarely I come back to it again later, in that way i think the image really serves as a diary entry - to capture a distinct feeling of the moment. I often look for a visual metaphor - an image that can translate a complex idea or sometimes a feeling.