Gustavs, your work often emerges from an interior state in which the painting is not merely produced but revealed, arising through intuition, symbol, and a kind of spiritual voltage. Could you describe the precise moment when this inner signal becomes undeniable, how do you recognize that you are no longer composing form on a surface, but entering into a conversation with something that precedes you, perhaps even uses you, in the act of creation?

To answer this question, I must indulge more deeply in the very way I found this necessity to paint and transfer energy and messages encrypted in my artistic journey, and the way I see and communicate the world beyond the surface.

When I was a child, I wandered much alone through the woods and places which contained some unseen force or energy. Riga city, nearest towns, and nature of Latvia. Churches, cemeteries, abandoned places such as factory buildings, abandoned homes—the places I felt safe in and capable of thinking freely in order to find and sense myself. Here I reflected the ideas of belief, death, life after death, existence of the spiritual realm, etc. All these places left an imprint on my thinking. I opened myself up to them and became capable of listening in silence that spoke volumes. The spirits of those places found me and started to communicate with me. I entered another kind of self-awareness.

Another thing is that I felt some inner connection with Asian culture and its approach to life. I have always had a feeling I have something deeply embedded in me that belongs to the Asian way of thinking and looking at things. Ruined old fragments of pottery, craftsmanship from times long gone, would arouse respect and a sense of cultural and spiritual legacy no one other than those who listen could evaluate and bring this spirit back to life. Mostly, those were household objects left behind in more than 100-year-old homes I found while wandering the woods during my summer vacations in my school years. I felt a kind of magic, and magic it was, since pagan culture was still alive at that time in this region. The energy left behind was still powerful, and it opened up my mind as I wandered back to my hat. I was living in a totally different timeline and sensed the Universe as a living being. We did not have any cell phones or even a TV at home. All I had were fairy tale books I read with utmost interest, especially those where magic was involved.

These experiences made me see everything as being alive. I communicated with everything—a tree, a stone, a river, the sea. This approach made me create some objects in order to transform the things I sensed. I wanted to channel the energy and, through this, communicate with the spirits involved. Mostly, this was totally unconscious at that time, but this was the beginning of my awakening. I made small sculptures from the clay I dug out in the garden, carved small ships from the bark of the birch, and used rusted, castaway mechanical parts I found behind old barns or households left to the elements in order to make sculptures that contained some spirit I believed in.

I was so deeply connected with this world, I no longer could normally fit in the society I was living in. The reality did not seem like a reality at all. To adapt, it took years, in fact. Attending the Academy of Arts of Latvia when I was 22 was one of the ways to do so. Alongside this, I was dreaming dreams that seemed more real than the real world. There I met different kinds of spiritual guides, elves, demons, saints, extraterrestrials of different races. I was being torn apart as I could not establish myself on any of their sides. I was deeply obsessed with the idea of death and life after death. I despised God because we all have to die, even though I loved Him with all my heart. No one told me of God as it was forbidden. The death world and its representatives found me at the end and contacted me. I became the messenger of the Ghost world for some time until I broke away from them with the help of the Lord of Light.

All of it has made me see reality as far more spacious and far more complex than I was told at school. By all means, my consciousness had been broadened by my way of perceiving realities. In my childhood, I used to experience out-of-body states when I fell asleep. I waited for the evening to come, preparing myself to "go outside." No one taught me this. I just knew how it worked. Dreaming was my true reality. In dreams, I was so alive. Consciousness in the state of dreaming was the thing I got used to. Later in life, I stopped concentrating on this as the awareness deepened, and I realized real-life experiences are truly those that matter, as we do what’s needed, why we are on this planet.

During the time when I became a professional artist, I had already made peace with God and found balance between darkness and light, which resonates in my art too. The process was fierce as the old way did not give up easily. This also worked out as a spiritual background in my heart. I truly see the sign in everything and can read its spiritual meaning, as I am consciously connected with the spirit world from the very beginnings. I stop painting an artwork when I feel it carries enough capacity to ignite the spectators' energy fields and bring the message across. The message of our true identity being immeasurable and infinite, but still trapped in labyrinths of our shallow mind and reality we create, not finding peace and relief at all.

My images in artwork are the signs that guide the spirit of man on the spiritual journey to attain itself, become passionate, and filled with humility, as the reality of the Spiritual Realm comes forth. I intend for it to operate on a subconscious level rather than a conscious one. The rage of chaos and the silence in contrast are only qualities of outer appearance. We are those who carry much more inside ourselves. We carry the Infinite—the Universe itself—and those are the imprints of the Universal energetic field that I try to convey in my artworks. To bring the consciousness of man to another level through my artwork.

The paintings suggest an energetic topography, layers of darkness and scratches, planes that collide and recede, areas of turbulence that suddenly open into quiet lucidity. How do you negotiate this duality between chaos and clarity, do you seek equilibrium, or is the instability itself the essential condition through which the viewer encounters their own subconscious landscape?

The question really depicts the inner logic of my art. It is both - the urge to find peace and equilibrium on the one hand, and to break the order of the existing on the other, to find new ways of expression and growth. It is the same with our life. We have to build peace in order to grow, but to develop, we have to open up to new challenges and leave the quiet place behind. My art tries to reveal that. We are one with all those states, and death brings new life. As you have noticed in my art, everything is moving, but it is seemingly so, as the very essence of the artwork - if observed more closely - is the precise sign that lives underneath every painting, revealing the reality and truth that dwell beyond the surface of the movement.

The rage of chaos and silence in contrast to it are only qualities of outer appearance. We are those who carry much more inside ourselves, and our lives, as the ocean does. This is the Infinite we carry - the Universe itself - and those are the energetic imprints of the Universal energetic field that I try to convey in my artworks. To bring the consciousness of man to another level through my artwork.

You have spoken of painting as a mission, a way of communicating with the unknown in the subconscious at the level of spirit. This ambition is strikingly universal, yet rooted in your specific experience of Riga, its architecture, its lamplight, its shadows. How do the local memories and atmospheres of your childhood translate into a language that can be understood beyond geography, in Italy, Japan, or New York, for instance, where your work has also been seen and recognized?

As I spoke before, my experience and understanding of self has come from an early age. In this, much contributed my conscious connection with the places of power I made a connection with as if they were alive. With Mother Earth, the Sun, the Moon, the Forest, moss, rivers, the Skies, the feeling of grass touching the bare foot, the early summer morning when the first sunlight appears in the Sea, the starry night, and the Universe above. There was not much buzz going around in Soviet times. All was silent, and nothing much disturbed the feeling of serenity and power of these things. Economically, everything was stagnant, and it benefited in many ways. Everything around was left untouched by economic tools, open to sense the essence of the beauty of the place.

In summers, I spent my school vacation in a hut in one of the villages by the seacoast. This was the oldest building in Ģipka, as the place is called. An ancient Livonian village with an ancient settlement site nearby—White Dune. The excavations here reveal the ceremonial site, too. The place is sacred, and I had a deep connection with it from my early days. The house we lived in had been a fisherman’s hut where they stayed before going to sea. This was built before any other building in this village. When our family moved in, there was no proper roof anymore. The place was devastated with time. You could see stars at night through the logs above. The place was heated with an oven, and you could see open fire. There was one big room with a small kitchen by its side. Everything was old, and there were windows with tiny panes. No electricity. When sleeping, you could hear waves of the Baltic Sea washing ashore, as the insulation was scarce. Everything contributed to the fact that my imagination, consciousness, and subconsciousness started working together. None of this was what I learned at school or anywhere else in the Soviet era. The places I visited and had contact with taught me everything.

This place and home was an ancient power cell, and the Spirit of the Universe spoke to me in my dreams. Besides, in my childhood, I was very fond of reading fairy tales. Especially, I loved those of the far North. The fact that I did not have TV until the age of 15 perhaps benefited this interest. I deeply believed in them, and those codes of the Ancients carved deeply in my consciousness and subconsciousness. I really followed the ideology they brought with them, especially those where magic was involved. How a person goes down under the earth and finds people who are talking and dancing and communicates with them. I truly had such contacts myself. I believe I was ghosted away for many years to come. I found the world of dreams my real reality, where I could experience the unknown, the unimaginable, and sense the world much more vividly and colorfully.

I do not know how I learned to leave my body at night. I started to experience conscious dreaming at an early age. As I was young and not wise, I used to go to the Dark places of the Universe in order to conquer my fear. I visited regions where there was no Light at all. I remember a strange triangle-shaped object passing by in the dark. The very moment you feel the Earth disappearing underneath you, elevating, was truly scary from the start. I truly wanted to explore everything I could, and Darkness seemed the most unknown, mystical, and alluring place to explore. During my "travels" in dark space, I contacted the dark matter. Back then, I did not know the exact name of it, but it was truly as we can depict it today. It was a conscious being with very powerful energy. The energy it released was devastating for my spiritual body, like radiation, but its intentions were full of love and support. I left and still remember this experience with gratitude. I told no one. Even today, it sounds crazy.

In my artwork, I follow the revelation that the dark is a living part of the Universe and supports us in unseen, unconscious ways. We must broaden our consciousness in order to accept it. We are everything and related to everything in our true being. I explored evil, too. This is a different kind of energy. I had been in the realm of demons and was lucky to break away from that. Much of the suffering of people comes from this realm. The Lord of Light accepted me when I bowed. The humility I learned helps me in my art, too. The truthfulness I carry with it plays the fundamental role. I have a sense of mission to carry these revelations and experiences further on, as I had been granted these visions not only for fun.

Your paintings often refuse the conventions of pictorial hierarchy, no single center, no stable focus, forms that rise and disappear. They seem to insist on a field of vision that is open, decentered, and porous. In this sense, what is the role of the spectator, do you imagine the viewer as a reader of signs, a traveler within labyrinths of texture, or as someone who must surrender to not knowing and allow the artwork to operate on them rather than be interpreted by them?

The painting itself is a portal to the Realm of Beyond. It encourages a different way of perception. Someone has to be a little distracted, a little scared, and confused to start seeing things differently—or as they are. First, there must be reluctance, then awareness of the worth of looking further, and the perception of vision afterward. The mind should be prepared in order to be focused differently. We live in a world where focus is fixed, as life is. To a great extent, this is established by the system and could be shifted. I encourage the spectator to learn to look without prejudice. This is my goal.

First, the spectator must feel the energy flowing, then the lines, planes—delve into the right state of consciousness—open up to let the artwork's color and tone operate on them, as well as the composition and intensity. Then the image that is found underneath has its role to play in telling the story or exploring the hidden truths. It is also enough if you do not understand but still experience the painting. Everything else comes depending on the level of understanding of art as such, the language of imagination, and the capability to find the power of the sign.

To deliver the “true” message from the “Spirit world,” I work a lot in my mind. I do not create for the surprise or entertainment. My work is more like a rune—the encoded language of imagery. The spell that breaks the lie and coziness, the feeling of security and hope. The only hope lies in changing the way of understanding and accepting the ever-changing reality we change exactly the same way with.

The thing that matters is whether we find something stable in ourselves that guides us in our growth and transformation into better beings—more capable of forgiving ourselves and others and of compassion and love. To find the dimension of love beyond fear of death. One must be very truthful toward themselves to obtain such a level of consciousness. I think my art can help achieve this. Because it is truthful, and the Higher Power comes together with it. Interpretation is great, but it’s on the intellectual level of thinking. The heart must be the target.

You write of dreams, visions, and states of consciousness that are not entirely voluntary, as if the image arrives first and only later becomes visible through paint. Could you speak about the intelligence of these images, do they teach you something before you paint them, or do they only become legible during the labor of layering, scraping, revising, when the hand and the surface discover their mutual logic?

In my dreams, I have encountered various bizarre experiences. I have met extraterrestrials, Lords of Darkness, Angels, Jesus, and dead persons who have spoken to me. I have been in Hell and in Heaven. I have wandered the Space. I have been riding on a broomstick, too. I have had alien abduction episodes. Luckily, I survived. All of these are states of mind experiencing itself. The truth is beyond all this. These experiences have spoken to me in order to make me wiser and more capable of helping others move on in their struggle to understand themselves and their place in the Universe.

Through my art, I try to convey the higher understanding which comes when all emotion has come to equilibrium. Another thing is painting artwork as an unknown place where you do not know what comes next. The freedom and exploration of the unknown, when intuition is the guide and the mind follows it. You do not know what to expect, but you are certain of the outcome, which never lies and is never disappointing. This is the practice of here and now. Nothing else matters.

All this scratching and brutality I sometimes use when creating the artwork is in order to release the pure energy from within, open to the impulse of creation like a volcanic eruption. I believe pure, precious things form then. In such a process, the “runes” fall into place and create text which I believe is sacred and helps to venture the realms we are all forced to overcome to face our transformation—something we ourselves totally do not want to undergo.

In your practice, the material seems inseparable from the metaphysical. You use spray paint, oil, rollers, plywood, scratches and stencils, yet the result is never about technique alone, but about energy, vibration, presence. How do you experience the relation between the physical act of painting and the nonphysical realities you are trying to access, does the brutality of certain gestures, biting, scraping, destroying, correspond to a spiritual rigor, a kind of purification or sacrifice?

The choice of the material in order to bring about the spiritual qualities in creating an artwork is quite essential in my practice. Under this, I mean the material should not indicate too much of its own origin. What I am trying to reveal in the artwork is the timelessness of creation. The one that does not fit in any idea of material, but is a substance of Spirit. This has been my stance from the very beginnings.

Our society expects something new all the time to entertain. This is not the sign of creativity. Nothing can be done the same way. Everything new is new. We are born anew every day. The creation, if pure, is original by all means. The thing that matters is whether it’s originated in pure 100 percent devotion. The energy involved dictates if it’s worth anything. The more predictable and oriented to satisfy the needs of the customer the art is, the more unworthy it becomes.

The imprint in the energetic field of Spirit marks the imprint on the benefits the art has on those who come in contact with it. This is the very unconscious purpose the artist creates. To make a difference and truly make an impact. Artists in ancient times used caves as their canvas. The one you have got is enough to create good art if you are a good artist.

Through my work, I truly convey vigor, purification, and sacrifice. Nothing of true value comes without these qualities. The brutal process and rough surfaces truly benefit the presence of struggle and suffering when attaining a new way of understanding.

You have described the solitude required to sustain an abstract practice within a cultural environment that did not initially recognize it. Isolation, misunderstanding, even exclusion became part of the terrain through which your work evolved. Looking back, how did these conditions shape your artistic ethics, do you believe that the struggle itself forged a deeper interior necessity, a kind of uncompromising fidelity to an inner truth that comfort and recognition might never have demanded?

All the ideas I nurtured before the decision to become an artist have been generated in solitude during my contact with my true self and places that inspired me. This is only inevitable if the process of creating art itself happens to be in solitude. There is no other possible way, even though, with time, it becomes quite hard. We are all humans after all, and communication is a must. In our society, the greatest communication is possible in the workplace. As an artist, you are alien. Castaway. We all want to belong. This is the biggest sacrifice, I think, one can take when venturing down this road. The other is money you sacrifice for your art.

These were the things I did not understand quite well when I started. I do not regret, though, as I am an artist. I am who I wanted to be. When attending the Academy of Arts of Latvia, I already knew what I was going to bring about in my artistic practice, and I also was aware that I was going to be an abstract painter, as I strongly believed abstract is the way to show invisible things I was so much about.

I became unpopular in a place where the academic style of painting is favored from the beginning, when they start to prepare new painters aiming for the Academy at the Rozenthal Art School at a young age. I had not been among them and was not favored from the very start. After graduating, everything was set to withdraw me from their inner circle. My art was valued as old-fashioned and uninteresting. Not good enough for local art authorities. So, I strived on my own for decades without any backing.

For ten years, I painted alone in my apartment without any other occupation, struggling to find my way of expression. In the years to come, several cases of depression got me. So hard it was. To be excluded. No one, except a scarce few, took interest in what I was doing. I continued. Then came an invitation from German publishers to show my work internationally. I was on my way to international acceptance, rather than that of my own country’s.

After many years, when I had already had exhibitions abroad, prizes, and awards, the local art curator, working together with the cultural department of Latvia, came to my studio and once again said that my art is stupid, old-fashioned, and does not fit in Latvian art culture. "I should go to those who understand its creative values."

Today, I am not shaken by those who do not like me. I know what I am doing in my art and believe in it even more as so many in the world have favored it. I worked as a painter in construction intentionally not to be involved with people and their drama. That helped a lot, staying creative and efficient in creating new art. I was, for the most part, working alone, so solitude helped me remain under the influence of the High Spirit of the Universe.

With my income, I fueled my art projects as I came to understand the significance of self-involvement as a necessity in managing my art’s visibility. After all those years, I certainly see that without all this hardship, no such art as mine could have been born.

In your statement, the paintings are said to seek the language of spirit. This implies that the artwork is not an object, but a threshold, an opening through which something nonverbal can be sensed. How do you understand the temporarily of this encounter, must a viewer linger, return, or lose themselves for a moment in order to hear this language, and what, in your experience, differentiates the viewer who truly enters the work from the one who only looks?

This is true. My artwork is a portal for the Spirit to come out and meet the person to connect with. It also enwraps the spectator with energy and delivers the exact message the Higher Spirit knows the precise way to work. Even I myself do not know it precisely. I can only interpret.

Through my out-of-body experiences and visions sent by the High Spirit, I have truly encountered the energies that form consciousness. The devoted Seeker meets what he is looking for and finds answers. The spectator is a seeker. Everyone is a Seeker. We may be conscious of this fact or not, but we all need our answers. My art answers some of them.

My artwork is an out-of-time experience. I believe only from this perspective should one ask for answers, as the spectator himself is an out-of-time manifestation. This is what I introduce. The one who sees the artwork really differs from the one who looks. The difference is grounded in the very level of willingness to accept something different, bizarre, or alien. The propensity to accept those areas of the mind that are ruled out is of much importance, as we do not want to differ from the mainstream, as we wish to belong. This way, we get separated from our true self. And then we suffer the consequences of that separation.

The fear of our true selves, the fear of leaving the known, is far too deep inside us. That is why I am doing what I am doing. Today we have everything, but still, we are on a low level of consciousness in order to be who we actually are. This is the origin of all evil in our lives. The work to develop the consciousness of man is God's plan.

For the spectator, it is demanding to watch several times in a row with some interval. Better to stand and watch for a longer period after each session. The eye starts to see previously unseen and feel unfelt. This feeling indicates the truthfulness of the experience and may bring you further if you wish to. Meet the unknown in its flesh. Meet yourself. It is not a comfortable feeling, but an awarding one.

The idea of the true self recurs throughout your reflections, not as a psychological identity, but as a deeper essence hidden beneath everyday survival, fear, and social performance. When you speak of touching this essence through painting, do you mean that the artwork functions as a form of revelation, and if so, what is revealed, an image of oneself, a memory, a fragment of collective consciousness, or perhaps something that cannot be named but only felt?

The true self I am standing for is the one you must survive in finding, in order not to lose it. It’s a feeling and understanding in one. It is awareness of you as a whole with everything. The feeling of bliss. Not from this world as we know it. Nothing is perfect here, and the least perfect is our common consciousness level.

Finding your true self is like finding God, as God truly resides inside us and in every being around us. Everything other than that is what will be removed with time. That is why we do not want to embrace it. But once we do, it becomes the precious thing in the Universe. The feeling of true reality in the world of chaos, wars, social and racial differences, and so on. Suffering and anxiety. It is almost inevitable that we are going to lose this feeling if found, but the very memory and acknowledgment that it truly exists makes us happy and relieved when reality bites.

The true self is the same as the Infinite. It brings love and acceptance with it, including everything – pain, suffering, loss, old age, etc. These are the phenomena of time. The true self is an out-of-time experience. My artworks support such ideas. That is why I elude materials indicating time. The deeper essence lies beneath the surface. The threshold to a new ability to see reality. Beyond every feeling of self as humans, but as entity – true consciousness – higher consciousness. This is one where all is included. It is inside ourselves.

I have experienced this feeling. It fell over me when I was deeply crying for the well-being of another, while doing a job on a construction site. The person I knew disappeared in this feeling of ecstasy. This was enlightenment. All my years of practicing art with a higher purpose involved, full devotion involved, had brought me to the verge of emotional catharsis. I was liberated. My consciousness had exploded. I am still carrying this feeling in my heart, as from my heart it originated.

Life comes with its hardships again, but the hope of liberation, possible one hundred percent, that resides in us, lives on. The feeling was totally scary, even for me. I stayed in this state just for a moment. So scary to lose yourself – you know entirely.

Many abstract painters have spoken about the moment in which an artwork suddenly becomes alive, when the image breathes. In your own process, you sometimes paint over ten finished paintings before the final work emerges, as if the canvas carries an archaeology of vanished attempts. What is the nature of that moment of recognition, is it joy, peace, shock, exhaustion, relief, and how do you know, with absolute certainty, that the painting has found its final form and the spirit has spoken?

Especially, I enjoyed this feeling of finding something entirely new in my early period. Many already completed artworks would be covered anew to leave only one interesting detail and continue with new inspiration from it, and so many times. The result was so rewarding, and I could cry out of joy. Later, I started to exploit small sketches to be transferred onto canvas afterward. This also is interesting, but not so.

The other approach I paint today is making artwork ready in a very short time, putting layer upon layer and very quickly finding a moment when the artwork is ready. I have got experience behind me, so it is no longer as frustrating and demanding as it had been in earlier years. The spectator would not tell the difference, though, between earlier works and artwork today. All seem perfect in their own way.

The moment the artwork is completed is filled with surprise and joyful astonishment, as I am looking for some special combination in my spontaneous and intuitive journey. I am looking for some ready-formed logic of accidental origin to fall into place in order to tell what I do not know from the beginning. In this, you experience the high presence of the High Spirit or Muse, for others. All of it is done to inspire others to stay devoted and love whatever one is doing.