Sandra Strēle graduated in 2016 from the Art Academy of Latvia, acquiring her Master's degree at the Department of Painting, also she had spent one semester as part of a student exchange programme at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. She received the visual arts scholarship of the Boris and Ināra Teterev Foundation in 2012, the Brederlo von Sengbusch Art Prize in 2014, the SEB Banka scholarship in painting in 2016, the prestigious grant from The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation in Canada (2019, 2021) and Young Painter Prize in 2019. Sandra Strēle has held a number of solo exhibitions, participated in group exhibitions and artist residences in Italy, Belarus, Estonia, Lithuania, Norway, India, Belgium, Germany, France and elsewhere.
Sandra Strēle has defended Professional Doctor’s Degree in Arts in 2024.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I remember my papa in the backyard forest planting market-bought mushrooms for me to find.
I also remember trips on an imaginary bus to an imaginary supermarket.
In painting strict lines blur and the blurred ones can become strict. It may be an illusion, but it can feel so real that it becomes true.
For me, painting is a form of storytelling. It is both a physical pleasure—experiencing the materiality of color, the dynamics of the human hand—and a form of escapism, offering refuge in worlds beyond the routines of everyday life. It is also a form of observation, trying to notice something of the magical in the real world.
I explore forms of expanded painting through large-scale painting series based on traditional representative painting medium in which plots, motifs, and characters evolve and transform, creating an ongoing narrative that feels both infinite and intimate. I refer to this approach as seriality—a dynamic where familiar images are recontextualized to spark new meanings and interpretations. However, painting is a slow observation, in which the events take place somewhere between the frames of the paintings.
For example, in one series, I depict a house, a tennis court, or a swimming pool as mundane spaces. In the next, these spaces are overtaken by overgrowth. What has happened in the imaginary time between these two paintings? The viewer is presented with two distinct temporal moments, but the events in between remain hidden.
My paintings are interconnected like the mycelium of mushrooms, quietly spreading beneath the surface. The latest works always carry something from the oldest, as motifs and images survive across time, evolving with new events.
An eclectic cast of characters—trampolines, primordial plants, garden gnomes, secret watchers—continue to interact across different landscapes, fictional buildings, swimming pools, and seas. Each one poses a question: What lies hidden behind the thickets? Who is the observer, and who is observed? What secrets linger in the splash of a pool? What stories do the nostalgic garden gnomes whisper?
In the most recent works, I delve into the contemporary discourse of hydrofeminism, particularly in the context of ecological crisis. In new series, natural elements—such as mushrooms and water—engulf modern spaces like nine-story buildings, beaches, and tennis courts, suggesting the fragility of human constructions against the unstoppable forces of nature. Latest paintings also reflect on themes of motherhood, bringing a personal dimension to exploration of environmental and feminist thought.
The monumental scale of the paintings creates illusory impressions of different spaces, inviting the viewer to enter one of the subworlds to reach the next one and discover something new about the previous one.
It is a painting, a game, and life itself.
