The calm before the storm

Arūnas Vilkevičius is a self-taught artist who paints watercolors and creates one-of-a-kind classical furniture.

For the past 30+ years, his passion has been the design and manufacture of classic wooden furniture and decor items. His pleasant style is Art Nouveau, dominated by nature - trees, flowers, birds and seemingly endless wavy lines. Connection with nature plays a very important role in Arūnas' work.

As a child, like many children, Arūnas loved to draw and paint. But as he himself says - then it was just a childhood hobby.

Arūnas started painting with watercolors in 2016. It's just that life has diversified everyday life with certain events - it was time to stop, to listen to your inner voice, which whispered that it's time for bigger challenges... So next to furniture creation, watercolor painting slowly, timidly appeared. It is watercolor and its capriciousness, which practically leaves no room for mistakes, and at the same time its lightness and limitlessness, that became Arūnas' new means of his artistic expression.

Arūnas openly admits that although for him this journey with watercolor is full of fears, tests, searches, conversations, disappointments that are very familiar to artists in their search for perfection, it is watercolor that gives fullness to his work and life, to himself and to the environment and people around him knowledge and understanding that perfection simply does not exist...

Arūnas creates realistic art - his creations require many hours of work, so he mostly uses photographs he has created and taken himself.

Arūnas' works are still little known to Lithuanian art lovers, although he is a frequent participant in international art events and competitions and a prize winner. Since 2018, his works have been awarded the highest prizes at the American Art Awards every year, in 2019 and 2020 he participated in the international watercolorist exhibition/festival in Fabriano in Acquarello (Italy) and his work "Autumn Symphony" was selected for the festival's traveling exhibition and is currently exhibited in the Fabriano Watercolor Museum. Arūnas is also a finalist of the world-class 14th and 15th realistic art competitions organized by the International ARC Salon Competition, his work "Rasa..The Moment.." was published in the 14th ARC Salon catalog. The artist has been a member of the World Art Academy (Mondial Art Academia, France) since 2020 and won the bronze medal in the competition organized by the academy in 2021 for his work "Whirlpool of Thoughts". Constantly looking for challenges, the artist participated in a miniatures competition organized in Australia in 2021 with the work "Glance" (25mm x 38mm) and was awarded the main Best in Show prize. In 2021 and 2022, Arūnas' works were published in the art catalog Guía de Arte "LEONARDO" (Spain), he was awarded the International Masters of Watercolor Alliance (IMWA - International Masters of Watercolor Alliance) excellence awards. In 2017 and 2022, the author held personal exhibitions of his works in Vilnius, his works are exhibited in art galleries in Finland, Spain, Poland, Slovenia and Italy.