Bartkus Rimvydas (Ray)
The creator of the fifty-litas banknote, artist Rimvydas Bartkus (51), has been living in the United States for over 20 years, working with major American publications such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and writing for Lietuvos rytas.
R. Bartkus and his wife moved to the U.S. in 1989, just as the winds of freedom began to blow through the Soviet Union.
Although he never planned to emigrate to America, that’s where he ended up. The artist insists that cosmopolitan New York, where he resides, offers a perfect atmosphere for creativity.
“I have never suffered from homesickness for Vilnius or Lithuania. I don’t know how I managed to avoid this common immigrant illness,” R. Bartkus confessed. “I’ve talked about this with the well-known jeweler Alius Šepkus, who also lives in New York. In his early years in the U.S., trying to suppress nostalgia, he would go to the airport to watch people arriving in New York from Lithuania via Moscow. Seeing that crowd would calm him down. Watching the newly arrived Lithuanians made him less eager to return. But for me, having arrived in New York before Lithuania’s independence was restored, the thought of going back never even crossed my mind. I left during Soviet times when there wasn’t much to hope for in life back in Lithuania.”
“I came at a good time – twenty years ago, there was a huge interest in print design. At the time, the so-called Polish school was renowned globally. So if an artist came from Eastern Europe, no one really asked whether you were Polish or Lithuanian – they would immediately accept you as a pretty decent artist, different from Americans,” the artist explains.
“I could give young artists one piece of advice – evolve with the times. Don’t cling to a single style. Newspapers and magazines hire artists for a few years, and then look for someone new. I’ve been working with The Wall Street Journal for over twenty years. I doubt anyone else has lasted that long at any publication. This success is due to the fact that, for me, the idea behind the article I’m illustrating is more important than the style,” said R. Bartkus.
When asked where his true home is – Vilnius or New York – the artist replied: “Home is New York now. But sometimes, after spending more time in Vilnius, it feels like New York is just a dream in my life. If some hypnotist talked to me long enough about Vilnius and Lithuania, I’d probably believe I never even left.”
Source: delfi.lt
