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“It’s very difficult to put in words really what the work is. I think I paint things I cannot say.” (Vija Celmins 2023)
Vija Celmins’ meticulous paintings and drawings of the natural world; oceans, night skies, deserts and spiders’ webs, capture the viewer and draw them into an unknowable expanse that contains an undeniable beauty. Born in Riga shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, her family escaped from the Soviet army’s invasion, emigrating to the United States in 1948. Fascinated by the ability of a painting to have depth of imagery while at the same time remaining flat; the duality of the experience that could be created through the work stimulated Celmins’s artistic vision. In works, often inspired by photographs previously taken or found, Celmins works on building depth and filling the canvas. “I find my works tend to go slow because I build up the image till it is as full and dense as I can make it. One might say that the paint and image are in a constant shifting relationship, and it has inspired me.” Celmins images reflect her philosophy that the work is about making. “I also feel that although I work for myself. I think art is really a thing from one person to another.”

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“It’s very difficult to put in words really what the work is. I think I paint things I cannot say.” (Vija Celmins 2023)
Vija Celmins’s meticulous paintings and drawings of the natural world; oceans, night skies, deserts and spiders’ webs, capture the viewer and draws them into an unknowable expanse that contains an undeniable beauty.
Born in Riga shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, Celmins’ family escaped from the Soviet army’s invasion, living for years in refugee camps in Europe until emigrating to the United States in 1948.
When she started school in America, a lack of English meant that Celmins often spent her time drawing. As she says, “while people were writing and talking, I was practicing making images.” This early passion, in part born from linguistic isolation, became the cornerstone of her career.
She moved to California, gaining a master's degree from the University of California in 1965 and then taught painting and sculpture before moving to New York in the 1980s where she continues to live and work to this day.
Early in her career, she abandoned thoughts of becoming an Abstract Expressionist, instead focusing on precise imagery with an almost documentary matter of factness. “I think that imagery invites you into the painting.” Fascinated by the ability of a painting to have depth of imagery while at the same time remaining flat, the duality of the experience that could be created through the work stimulated Celmins’s artistic vision.
In the 1960’s, she painted objects in her studio, and later moved to using pencil and charcoal extensively with denser subject matter; the sea, the night sky, deserts, spiderwebs. Celmins picks up a pencil particularly which is a precise instrument to document the surface of paper while laying down images.
Going back to painting later, Celmins works on building depth and filling the canvas. “I find my works tend to go slow because I build up the image till it is as full and dense as I can make it. One might say that the paint and image are in a constant shifting relationship, and it has inspired me.”
Celmins images reflect her philosophy that the work is about making. “I also feel that although I work for myself. I think art is really a thing from one person to another.”
Her works are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Tate Modern in London and other prominent museums around the world.