Įkyrios Mintys 1991

Sarunas Sauka made “Įkyrios Mintys” with oil on canvas. He's really gone to town with the oil here! There’s a lot going on in this painting, and it feels like nothing’s resolved. There are many details, but the overall effect is kind of murky. The paint handling is neither precise nor loose. Instead, the material seems overworked in places, with forms repeated but not clarified, like the trunks of the trees. I keep coming back to the seated figure in the painting; look how his raised arm is caught in a moment of suspended action. He is posed to strike, but the gesture is unresolved. The same is true of the prone figure with what looks like nails stuck into it. There is a combination of high drama and indecision. There is something of Francis Bacon’s psychological tension in this piece, although the forms are more defined, and the story is more specific. In the end, painting is about making strange worlds rather than representing the one we already know.