Art and Fairy Tales

Hey everyone! My name is Jurga. I am a graphic artist and illustrator with a strong passion for mythology, legends and fairy-tales. You can see them in almost all my creations. Today I wanted to tell you my origin story of how I got where I am now and why my art is filled with ancient gods and magical creatures.

When I was a kid I had two favorite things to do — to draw and to read. I never ever doubted that I wanted to be an artist. I was drawing ever since I can remember. So naturally I ended up in the Academy of Arts.

As for reading — I loved fairy tales and all kinds of fantasy stories. What kid doesn’t love fairy tales, you may ask? But my thing was more like an obsession for a long time. Of course, I didn’t realize that. The piles of books from every library in the city, from my grandmothers home, from friends. I was reading like crazy. I would swallow the whole book in a day or two which a normal kid would be reading all summer. I read all fairy tales from all the countries that I could find translated to Lithuanian. All the fantasy books for kids, then for adults. There weren’t that many in Lithuania at a time. Then one day I came across the mythology section in the library. I was so fascinated by all those stories. First Greek mythology, then Norse, then Slavic and Celtic. I even found some stories translated from Japanese and Arabic. It was so interesting!

After a while I started looking for Baltic mythology stories. There were some, but very little to compare to other well known cultures. I thought that maybe only this library didn’t have that many books about the subject, because, you know, it’s our culture, how can we not have books of our mythology piled up on the shelves? And it wasn’t as if there were no stories, I heard the whole bunch of them from my grandmother and great grandmother, so I knew that they have to be somewhere.

I remember as a kid I always had two books —’ Lithuanian fairy tales’ — a large book with scary stories and even scarier pictures. (Later I ended up learning illustration from the same well known artist that made those pictures, isn’t that funny?). And a much smaller book with short myths — ‘Wounded wind’. When I started to search for more stories, I always got the same two books in the libraries. Everything else I could find were the research works by archaeologists and culture researchers. They were good and some of them even interesting, don’t take me wrong, but I wanted the stories themselves. I wanted to know more about the old gods, about the forest creatures, about the ones who lived besides people and helped or scared them.

Then I finished the high school and entered the Academy of Arts in Vilnius. The whole new fascinating world opened up for me and I forgot about my fairy tales for a while. There were so many things I had to do and learn, so many new people and a feeling of a real community for the first time in my life where I was a part of it. (Because in high school I used to be a loner, very quiet, hardly talked to anyone at all).

In the Academy I met the whole bunch of new people who were to study with me, and I decided to change my attitude. It seemed easier to do at that point — almost no one new what kind of person I was before, so I remember thinking that I would be this whole new girl who communicates with people and can make friends more easily. So I focused on learning, making art and making new friends.

After I graduated the Academy of Arts with best rates and a Masters degree however I found myself in a very odd situation — I had the knowledge, I was a professional artist, as my degree declared, but nobody wanted to hire me as I did not have any work experience. I didn’t know what to do, I was frustrated for weeks. I was going with my resume and portfolio from door to door to every publishing house and magazine I could think of. I did not want to go back working in a bar as I used to when I was studying, I wanted to make some money to be able to travel with my boyfriend (he is my husband now). He was a lot older than me, already had a good job and was traveling to remote countries every year. But he could not just pay for me also if wanted to go with him.

So, for a few following years I freelanced for anyone who would ask to draw something or make a layout or a cover, or a postcard — anything. It was hard, I never knew how much money I was going to have at the end of a month, some of my clients turned out to be jerks and didn’t pay at all, others delayed payments for much longer then I expected. All my orders were random, I tried to please every client, to make adjustments to my style or even copy styles that they liked. But the earnings constantly were the biggest issue. That’s funny, because in Academy no one ever told us how to get a job or even how to prepare your portfolio or compete in the market, how to promote yourself as an artist. In Academy we just lived in this big bubble of art where everyone was so important, spiritual and inspired to change the world with their art, that when that bubble exploded I was shocked and angry and could’n figure out why I am struggling so much.

Then, one winter, after another unsuccessful month, a new possibility presented itself. A printing house where my boyfriend worked was looking for a new designer. I applied for the position, though the idea of working from 9 to 5 in the office was frightening to me. But, as I was preparing for our trip to Chile, I was desperate. They gave me the job and there I was — a designer for one of the largest printing houses of the Baltic states. I thought it would be just a temporary solution as I wanted to live from what I create, and I wanted to create things that I cared about. But, people say that there is nothing so permanent than temporary. So I ended up working there for the next decade.

Eventually my position shifted to security designer as the printing house bought new equipment for document printing. I went to study this new software they bought for creating passports and other documents to Hungary. Then some software developers came to Lithuania to show us additional stuff. I became an expert of the thing. In a few years I could create a passport and all the following documents such as ID cards, Resident permits, Driver license and so on in a week. That’s an incredibly short term in this industry, nobody is doing design in such speed. But I was forced to be able to do this as all our sales people were competing with other companies with the same scenario — we will do your design and prints quicker and cheaper then anyone else. This was so frustrating. The job was hard, responsible and challenging enough as it was without this constant feeling of stress to actually meet the impossible deadline. But I kept working because the payment came every month, the social security package was included, the taxes were payed and life flowed it’s constant stream as for everybody else around me. And also I could travel once a year. I draw however, whenever I had some energy left after work. Did some random freelance jobs, illustrated some books.

Every now and again I got so unhappy that I tried to pitch my randomly gathered portfolio to other companies hoping that they would hire me as an illustrator, not as a designer. Nobody ever answered.

One summer I did a CD cover for a folk music band. I knew one member of it, so he asked me to do it for free, as they were quite unknown. I agreed and as a thank you I received this beautiful hand made leather pouch from another member of the band and tickets to a Black-Horned Moon festival where they were invited to play. I remember I hesitated for a while about going, because it was a rainy weekend and spending two or three nights in a tent didn’t sound all that nice. I am so glad I went. The festival was held in a stunning little lake island with big oaks growing around it. When I was walking among those old huge trees I saw an ancient altar lighted up under one of them and a group of people dressed in long linen robes who were singing around it. All of a sudden my old passion for myths and legends came rushing back. I was so exited! There were people everywhere who were passionate about the subject just as I was! I couldn’t believe it for a while! Two women passed by me chatting lightly about spirits of the forest! I saw an old man siting on a stone and playing kankles (an old Lithuanian instrument) there were a bunch of children just sitting and listening to him. Although the fact that he had a little pony cub beside him could have helped too… All those crafts and traditions, all those replicas of the old things people were making, all the songs and stories that had been told that weekend brought me so many memories, and joy just listening to them. I knew that I had to do something, I had to be among those people. Although I didn’t really fit with my specialty as a security graphic designer for a printing house.

So I started to search how could I fit in? I wanted my old stories and fairy tales back. There were fairs and Live Archeology days where all of them gathered, festivals in other countries and live events. I tried to enter as a participant to some of them but then I realized one thing — these people were living like that all the time, it was their life, not just playing around in some medieval fairs and festivals. It was so time consuming to prepare to even one event that it was impossible to have a day time job all along.

Then my brother and me put together a plan how to make a video game about mythology. We thought the game would be awesome, we thought of all kinds of plot strategies, of the character appearances, overall style and all kinds of other things. The problem was the game plan got so big that we had to find a wealthy investor. That was a wall we couldn’t overcome. We had no experience in this industry, we had no team, we just had an idea. So that one went right to the bottom of the drawer after a while. Which is a shame because I still think it would have been awesome.

I thought a long time about what else could I do, how could I combine my passion for mythology with my art. And the very obvious solution came to my mind one evening.

I decided to create a series of paintings about the old Baltic gods and do an exhibition. That would be a good start, right? So I painted 12 big paintings and found a place where I thought they would look very nice. I was waiting for my exhibition impatiently. I was all exited and then, when two months were left until the big date, I had an email from the owners of this place. It said that they are canceling my exhibition because they just realized that my paintings were too heavy to hang from the ceiling (which was designed for hanging things). I was so disappointed. To find another place for an exhibition in such a short period of time was mission impossible unless you had a lot of money to pay for gallery walls. Which I hadn’t. So my exhibition was canceled. The paintings were stacked together in a corner gathering dust, I didn’t want to see them for a while.

One afternoon I met with a friend for a coffee. I told him this story and he said ‘So what, they turned you down, just go find another place, who cares if you have to wait another year. If you really want it don’t just give up’. And I realized that he was right. There is always more than one way to go where you want to be.

Instead of trying to find another affordable place for my art, I gathered all the documents and filled the application to enter a Lithuanian Artists Association. I was accepted despite the complete lack of exhibitions held in the past. The best thing about being a member is that you can hold an exhibition entirely free of charge every two years in the galleries that belong to this association. That was a step forward.

Another thing that I’ve done after that was creating a series of graphic works on the subject that I cared about — Baltic mythology — and turned them into the art prints, that I could actually sell. I created a Facebook page around them, started telling stories about Baltic gods and legends themselves. And all of a sudden I had some listeners (although I know that my English sucks and my sentences are not structured properly). Not customers, note, but listeners and people who were telling me that they liked my art. The problem was that I had no idea how to sell. I started to read books about marketing. That wasn’t enough. So I bought an online course about that. Then another…

Now I am in a place where I almost crafted my first offer. The core thing will be my art prints. I am going to launch it in the next few weeks. I have big hope for this launch, because my secret goal is to finally be able to quit my job and live from my art, doing things that I know how to do best and enjoy doing them. And as I have a little daughter now, I would really like to spend most of my days with her, not with those office people who I don’t even like that much. Also, I’d love for people who really like my style and my art to actually have some prints and hang them on their walls.