A solo show by Liene Mackus, an emerging contemporary Latvian artist. The exhibition "Warm Meadow" is a journey through the meadow, unfolding as a quiet exploration of nature, memory, and personal connection.

The series of works takes us on a journey through the meadow – into my personal landscape, born of silence, sleepness, and thought. It is an attempt to visualise beauty. At the centre of the exhibition is a real meadow in the countryside, where I observe life, imagining plants as objects. What matters is to feel their scent as I pick them for teas, herbariums, and try to embody them in images and associations. I dream about their pollen – how pollination, reproduction, fission, and wilting processes take place. This observation recurs year after year, like a dream in which I develop the idea of plants as real objects. They are transformed into abstract and highly specific objects or drawings by enlarging them and extracting details out of context. By changing scales and viewpoints – such as seeing from the perspective of an ant or a spider – I compare plant forms with my body, inner anatomy, texture, and what I feel within. This exhibition is about being consciously part of nature. Randomly found cabbage white wings, anthers, flower stems, and fluffy, levitating seeds are the main characters this time, bringing me closer to nature and the garden. A physical connection with plants – through sowing, collecting, and smelling – is also a connection to the women in my family, for whom gardening is in their blood. In the process of drawing and creating plants, I can better feel the past and present, and contemplate the future. It can be seen as a kind of everyday note-taking I do while drawing. For me, it’s a diary in which, in a poetic way, I try to capture everyday feelings. “Warm Meadow” invites the viewer not just to see, but also to feel the matte texture of a found butterfly wing on their fingers, the taste of sand, and the strong pigment of pollen. It’s a space where the cultivated meets the wild, where nature unites the human body with the body of plants. – Liene Mackus, 2025