Artist's Notes
Look deep into nature and then you will understand everything better...
~ Albert Einstein
I am inspired by the unknown. It is a curiosity and a desire to explore something that I do not understand, something that I only sense. I find the beauty in mystery and in undescribed entities.
Cracks 
The world is cracking
and in between those cracks, there is a new beginning: Unknown
~Liba Labik
The Creatures Time Forgot
I painted a series of small encaustic works after I visited Bella Colla. The series was inspired by organisms and plants living under the trees and by the amazing nature of the west coast.
Dallas Jeffs (Editor & Curator of Artistrunwebsite) wrote about my series:
....... shapes rendered in encaustic that look like embryonic sea creatures waiting to hatch or grow into something new.
Drifting in Time
That great mystery of TIME, were there no other; the illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like all-embracing ocean tide on which we and all the Universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which are, and then are not….
~Thomas Carlyle
Many of my paintings are inspired by drift wood aimlessly wandering through places and times. Water and wind shapes wood into amazingly beautiful pieces of art that always intrigued me. One has to ponder on idea what times trees lived through and what places they visited on their journey before they were washed into the banks of the river, lake or sea.
I explored in "Drifting in Time" lines in driftwood that I found fascinating. For me, they connect all times through driftwood was traveling. It feels like time stopped ticking and past, present and future became connected in one line. The line becomes another line and then all starts over again….lines after lines before they will disappear into eternity. Time is one of the greatest mysteries of the Universe we live in. Time will allways keep me wondering about its reasons and meanings. It inspires me to create, to wonder and to dream: “How about if there is no time ….”Perhaps time left its prints in these lines. Prints that are worth to explore, admire and ask what time really means in our lives. Are we capable to live without time and aimlessly wander through different worlds? …or do we always need time to direct us where and when to go?
The Circle
Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beuaty...
~Albert Einstein
The image of the circle has been always somewhat "magical” for me. I perceive it as enclosing a "sacred space" where I can search for memories, imagine, forgive and let go. I ponder how much the circle can be compared to life. When I observe the ripples emanating from the point where a thrown pebble breaks the surface of water I am fascinated. The pebble splashes and affects the surface of the water, one circle produces another one and so on and so on.... One makes a choice, and a chain of actions and interactions begin...
Little Discoveries
Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river, it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger, it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.
~Jorge Luis Borges
I see the Past, Present and Future existing all at once before me...
~William Blake
Did you ever ask yourself what is your life about? I did ask myself and I began to question my own life journey. I began to ponder on the illusion that our life in many ways presents itself as a fate. Overwhelmed by thoughts and emotions, I ran out of my home that day and I spent the entire afternoon around the river sensing, feeling, touching, forgetting and re-discovering simple things. I captured my little discoveries in my paintings and I am sharing them with you. The rest is up to you. There are infinite possible questions to be asked and as you know answers keep changing within time...time is a river...time is an illusion.
Energy is an eternal delight…
~William Blake
Hands
Many of my paintings capture hands.
The hands of the “caveman” are not different from ours today. However, the mind of civilized man is filled with thoughts different from the mind of the “caveman” It is because hands always played, and still play , a very important role in the development of human beings and their minds. Making and carrying tools, and creating art could be hardly done without hands.
Hands respond instinctively to the inner world of one’s mind and often reveal what the face would repress. Hands pointedly ask us what our minds are filled with. Maybe the "caveman" knew this, so he decorated his cave with tracing of his hands to manifest his quest for art. Tracing of hands in caves seem “to wave or reach to us across centuries and across continents. They are represented without great dexterity or skillful manipulation, yet they are, at the same time, significant imprints of the potential for just that-great dexterity, skillful manipulation.” **
...perhaps we should decorate our homes with hands to remind ourselves who we are and to imagine the untapped potential that we each posses within ourselves.
* Frank R.Wilson
** Nigel Spivey
Colors
Everything is connected. Touching colors is a powerful experience that influences our minds even if it is subconscious. Such a touch would be impossible without our hands. Hands cannot explore the touch of colors without the mind's command. We can paint our world according to our imagination with our minds and hands. The surrounding world "paints" us. If we touch more, we can imagine more. If we imagine more we can paint a more colorfull world. In our universe, everything is shaped by encountering colors. We are touched by colors and there is no escape. Colors have an impact on how we feel. Colors are omnipresent.
Reflections
I often use mirror images (or reflection) of my subjects and their surroundings in my work. It allows me to imply ideas about reality and/or illusion and to make new discoveries. The mirror (water and other reflective objects) represent for me the bridge "in between" two worlds. One world reflects the other. Dispate all differences, they cannot exist without each other. Both worlds must coexist as one entity in order to perceive each other and themselves.
Invisible
...everything is possible Cause no one has to hide Beyond the invisible…..
~Michael Cretu and David Fairstein
It is not the form of the subject that I am interested in. I perceive the form as an illusion only. What strikes me is that elusive and invisible something that I am trying to capture in my work. I attempt to explore a moment when past, present and future is revealed at once. In that moment there are no limits, only an ever expanding promise of change, as questions become our answers.
Memories
...nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it…
~L.M.Montgomery
Memory which comprehends all the experiences that we have had, becomes landscape for me. Every fragment of the physical world such as events, words, people, places, fragrances, sounds etc. has its own place in our memory. Every fragment thus becomes part of our personal landscape.
Water
Water is the driving force of all nature…
~Leonardo da Vinci
Many of my works are inspired by water. Water links all aspects of our existence; there would be no life without water. Global warming and environmental pollution are changing the rhythms of nature that all living things have come to rely upon. There is a concern about water for future generations. I hope that my paintings will help keep awareness of the importance to protect nature and that water will stay as a clean source of life and an infinite muse for artists of generations to come.
Poetry
There is a certain energy in between here and there, there and here,
in between me and you, you and me,
in between Earth and Universe, Universe and Earth,
there is a certain energy on the bridge “in between”
The bridge of chaos where the order is implied though not obvious yet
I am on that bridge.
~ Liba Labik
