Boriss Bērziņš Self-Portraits (07.10.2010. - 12.12.2010.)

Carrying on the tradition of presenting annual exhibitions from the Boriss Bērziņš' (1930 -2002) Legacy Collection  at the Minor Hall of LNMA, which started in 2007, the year 2010 will be present a tribute to the 80th anniversary of the painter's birthday.

A portrait is a difficult thing to make. There has to be a likeness, otherwise it would not be a portrait. And yet, simply painting a similar-looking face, that's nothing! It's the same wait with flowers. So you paint the, so what? Van Gogh, son of a bitch, made his sunflowers look even better than they really were. Leo Svemps used to say: If you want to test a painter, ask him to paint some roses. And that was that for me!Whenever I have to paint roses now, I'm in a funk.  I can do flowers when I paint my own flowers. When I am lying, not copying.  As for portraits, I don't make a lot of those whoch involve copying  from nature. I like to paint a human being, especially his head, in not quite as specific a way; even a self-portrait. It is not so much how the person looks; I find it interesting to paint myself as a Midsummer revellier, wearing  a wreath of leaves on my head. Very often I paint myself among the revellers. B.Berziņš