Not only children, but also adults study in Lithuanian art schools. They are taught drawing, painting, composition, and various techniques. Ecological art is still making its way into the curriculum, usually through projects.
Vaclovas Vekerotas is an artist, art teacher, painter who holds his exhibitions all over the country. He is currently working at an art school with a group of adults. Since he uses a lot of natural materials in his work, he teaches his students how to use soil, sand, gravel, wood and other natural materials. He tries to reveal the importance of ecology to his students. He says that Lithuanians always worshiped nature. They are the last pagans left in Europe. They understood that nature was the source of life – it feeds and dresses them. But time passed on, modern technologies came into life, and today pollution of nature has become a very pressing problem. The scientists note that nature is extremely polluted, but no political or ecological solutions can be made because businessmen want “fast, much and cheap”, and consumers want “cheap and much”. Therefore, it is a global problem.
According to the teacher, artists must draw public attention to environmental problems. The artist remembered a plein air event that took place a few years ago in a certain Lithuanian village. The artists who came to paint in the plein air found a source and a hill nearby, and many holy pictures and crosses in the trees. They were very interested and started asking the villagers. Village people told them the story about the source. One of the legends tells that a lost, blind puppy was walking along the road and accidentally fell into a hole, and suddenly he regained his sight. It turned out that he fell into the source. And then people decided that the water was holy and began to visit the source. But time passed and gradually people forgot the source. Then plein air artists decided to make works on this topic, to embody the legend into material, namely ecological material from local resources – they used lake sand, ground, herbs and tree branches. They made their paintings and exhibited them there on the hill on the trees. Painters wanted to strengthen people’s faith in the power of water and transfer it to life.
In Lithuania, there are artists who paint with natural materials, there is even an artist who shocked everyone, painting with her own blood. It is possible to use everything – says V. Vekerotas. The teacher himself uses soil, gravel, sand, often he paints without a brush, only with his fingers. He may show pictures that are painted with only natural materials. Wood, gravel and water – simple materials that will return to nature and will not harm the environment, soil – to earth, tree – to the circle of nature. This is how the painter imagines ecological art – when natural or secondary raw materials are used, without polluting nature. For example if you want to paint and you find yourself in a distant homestead without any tools, you may take everything at hand – find gravel, take coffee, its thick, make a concentrate to get color. The painter teaches his students to work only with their fingers, so that they feel the material. An artist must not only paint, but also spread the message, use less pollutants. This is how you can understand the meaning of your life, gain the wisdom to live in harmony with the cosmic order, with nature. Because every person is a kind of creator and what is inside him, he expresses through his philosophy of life.
The students took a creative approach to the ecology lessons in art and created their paintings using natural and secondary materials. One of the students Ramune, whose specialty is a florist and who constantly works with natural resources, was interested in Baltic culture. She made a tree of life, using hay, gravel, sand, and coal. She used materials that go through the cycle of nature and should stay in nature. Another student Jolita used secondary materials in her work. She thinks that nothing disappears from our universe, from nature, and that garbage can also become something. She chose secondary raw materials – fragments of cup, remains after the repair works, shards of the mirror, tree bark.
Ecological art is being discovered more and more widely in Lithuania, because it helps to reveal the inner world of artists, it shows that a human must live and create in harmony with nature.
