Nowadays, more frequently and insistently, artists who have chosen a specific form of art to express themselves are asked to articulate their ideas and conceptual foundations for their work in words. However, in most cases, colors, images, dreams, and feelings confined within the bounds of specific words lose their mystery and mood, which are created by the means of expression available to the artist...
In my works, feelings that shape me are undoubtedly dominant. Perhaps that’s why every time I pick up the pen to articulate what I’ve crafted verbally, I feel like I am writing an explanation. This implies explaining to those who think differently... It may well be that the endeavour of artists is a kind of co-existence with like-minded individuals and a contrast to radically different ones (here I am referring more to significant differences in views - the conceptual approach).
So, I, textile artist Daiga Štālberga, certainly do not belong to the radical revolutionaries who want to change the “existing order” with each subsequent work. In my opinion, the field of textile art, as a branch of applied decorative arts, already mandates that the work be practical, namely, functional. A good exhibition organizer and curator can often present anything that otherwise has no artistic value outside the walls of the exhibition hall. I find the applicability of work important even after the exhibition. Increasingly, I am convinced that artists are responsible for their works if they are exhibited – shown to the public. Every work, in a way, addresses the viewer...
I take pride in my affiliation with traditionalists and the followers of Rūdolfs Heimrāts’ school! Upholding traditions, drawing from the legacy left by our predecessors, and continuing what others have started, is not particularly popular or modern these days, but I feel it as my niche.
Even if daily we live and strive for today, – yesterday and tomorrow are equally important to me. I feel the two most essential links of human life rhythm – with nature and history – the known and what is yet to happen. The past leaves its certain marks – patterns that teach, explain, and sometimes astonish. Tomorrow allows for dreaming. My future portrayals extend to the desire to see this world in a certain balance, harmony, with a still living (not beautified) idea of beauty in art. The inexhaustible source of inspiration here is nature, which is harmonious, beautiful, and unique in its charm, colors, and moods. It’s impossible and unnecessary to imitate it, but living in harmony with it and drawing from it is what I see as my paramount task. In my works, the human appears as a figure merging with nature, as it is a part of it. Just like my feelings and emotions revealed in the interplay of color fields, line rhythms, and the presence of light.
Primarily, I encapsulate my world feelings and visions into tapestries. With each subsequent work, in accordance with its composition, I also strive to set various technically different natural tasks, both in creating textures and in thinning the warp – fabric weave to achieve a certain transparency.
Since 1995, I have also created several works in my own author technique, which are formed by sewing paper and silk batik or linen fabric areas (“Gates”, “Treasures of Agamemnon”...). These works have been created feeling the connection with history, its signs and patterns, and the human as a symbolic attribute, architectural forms as witnesses, which on one hand testify to the quality of past times, but on the other, convince me that certain values, important in the past, will also be indispensable in the future. Like the idea of beauty in art, which I serve…