The End of a Lonesome Road 2016

Jana Brike made this painting, titled 'The End of a Lonesome Road', sometime after being born in Latvia in 1980. Brike is part of a generation of Eastern European artists whose work navigates identity and self-discovery in a post-Soviet world. Here, a young girl sits astride a unicorn amidst a sun-dappled forest. The unicorn's body is covered in tattoo-like drawings that evoke the visual language of memory and experience. The choice to 'tattoo' the unicorn complicates our sense of purity. Simultaneously innocent and knowing, Brike's art often features girls on the cusp of womanhood. She says that the girls represent her own "exploration of the world, where the soul meets matter." In this dreamlike world, the artist uses the imagery of fairytales to explore themes of innocence, sexuality, and the search for self. In this world, girls are not merely symbols of purity but active agents in their own stories. This canvas captures a moment of transition from innocence to experience, in which the "lonesome road" ends not with despair, but with the magical possibility of a personal journey.