About the Artist
Liba Labik is a Calgary, AB, Canada based artist. Originally from the Czech Republic, she arrived in Canada in 1993. Liba graduated from ACAD in Calgary in 2002 with President’s Honour and BFA degree (Painting Department). After her graduation she opened and established LIBA (Life Is the Best Artist) Art Studio. Her work is ultimately about expressing a connection to spirituality, nature, and humanity.
Artist Statement
At the intersection of the world of reality, and the world hidden within us, I confront my assumption about life. In my work, I search for endless hidden treasures in nature and in our inner and outer world.
I work and experiment with a variety of mediums. I enjoy working with the “unexpected and expected”, “take and add", and vice versa, with varieties of layers and materials. I love investigating new possibilities in my work by using imaginative arrangements of my subjects to revise the "known" and to travel to the “unknown” My work combines representation and abstraction. I fuse and blend traditional painting techniques with the contemporary ones, to create “collages” of paintings. This approach leaves the door open for interpretation, allowing viewers to participate by establishing their own connection to the artwork/s, and perhaps recalling some of their own life experiences. I want people to look at my work and take the time to reflect their own lives, and who they are as beings in this world.
My current work is about forest. I attempt to visually express my feelings of being surrounded by the peaceful greenery, the flowers, the leaves, the birds, berries and branches, fungi, mosses, lichens, water, and grasses to capture the beauty of it.
There is a constant change in the forest and in seasons, as there is in our lives. I tried to capture these changes with combining images from different times and places. There are flowers blooming, as well as leaves slowly dying. The birds (for me) in some of my paintings symbolize hope and good omens.
I compare time spent in the forest, to escapes from time. Paradoxically these escapes inspire me to think of time and about changes within time. One day the forest is blooming and the next, it is experiencing harvest.
We are inevitably connected to the natural world that we are often sadly forgetting. My hopes are that my paintings remind viewers the beauty of nature, the silence, and sanctuary, where one can relax, recharge, and become inspired.