Five in the Boat

Lithunian artist Arūnas Žilys and his vividly colored oil paintings are well known on both sides of Atlantic. Arūnas‘ work stands apart from mainstream Lithuanian artist with unique subjects as well as colors. While traditional Lithuanian art has been either strictly realistic or abstract, Arūnas has chotose neither way. His paintings have clearly defined subjects; however, the subjects are taken from the fantasy world. For instance, many subjects look like they‘re right out of fairy tale, with many theatrical elements and decorations. They‘re usually full of mistery and suspense, as if you are looking at fairy tale frozen in time. The paintings transport you back in time, and all sudden you‘re wondering whether you‘ve seen this setting before, some time your own childhood fantasies. The subjects usually entail many different cultural aspects from ancient history to modern times, and could be attributed to vitually any part of the world, thus making Arūnas‘ paintings highly admired by people from a variety of backgrounds and cultures. The painting subjects are instantly admirable. They avoid main features of post-modernism art, such as declarations of aggressiveness, ugliness and anger. The human element in his paintings is mysterious, provocative, and highly sophisticated. Although in many cases the subjects are slightly surrealistic they do not declare any contfrontations, pain or suffering. Au contraire, they are full of peace and claim self-consiousness, declaring the essential goodness of the human nature. In addition Arūnas‘ colors emulate warm beauty and depth of the fantasy world. His style of painting creates and additional vibrating effect, where depth and stucture of painting changes with lighting, angle of viewing, and even your own mood. Rich texture, mix and contrast of colors perfectly supplement the themes and give Arūnas‘ paintings inmistakable uniqueness that separates them from the crowd and make them so desired by art collectors from around the world.