Nijolė Šaltėnytė — Artist — Renata Briggman — Renata Briggman

Nijole Saltenyte etching art name "the two of is in the boat"

Renata Briggman and Nijole Saltenyte. Nijole is Renata's aunt.

NIJOLĖ ŠALTĖNYTĖ My aunt. My artist. My walls.

I want to introduce you to someone important.

She is family — my father's cousin — and her art covers every wall of my home. Not by accident and not all at once. Piece by piece, deliberately, I sought her work out after my divorce when I needed beauty that could hold complexity.

Every day I live with her prints. Every day they feed something in me — truth, complexity, melancholy, mystery. A kind of beauty that does not simplify. That does not look away. I find myself in her work in a way I cannot fully explain. I just know that when I stand in front of one of her pieces something settles in me.

That is rare. That is worth introducing you to.

Nijolė Šaltėnytė was born in Kaunas in 1946 and graduated from the State Art Institute of Lithuania in Vilnius in 1973. She has spent her life making art — etchings, miniatures, exlibris, book illustrations — with a classical technique of etching enriched with aquatint that she has never abandoned and never stopped pushing.

She worked as an artist during the Soviet era. That context matters. To make art that is this interior, this melancholy, this uncompromising — in that time, in that place — required a particular kind of courage. Her work is not simple. It never takes the easy path. It asks something of the person looking at it.

She has exhibited in over 150 local and international exhibitions — Japan, France, Norway, Slovenia, Argentina, Poland, Italy, and beyond. She has been awarded diplomas and medals across Europe. She is, by any measure, one of the most exhibited Lithuanian graphic artists of her generation.

But what I know about her is not her resume.

What I know is that she is extraordinary — deeply interesting, genuinely loving, completely real. I know that her dream was to see the Grand Canyon. So I organized the trip — my sister, my mother, my aunt Nijolė, and the Grand Canyon. I watched her stand at the edge of it. I will not forget that.

Her work carries something I have never been able to fully name — the right amount of melancholy, mystery, and genius. That when I look at her prints I feel something settle in me.

The etching that anchors my brand is hers. Valtyje — In the Boat. Two figures, moving through water together. I chose it because it says something about my work that I cannot quite put into words. I am not standing on the shore giving directions. I am in the boat. I am making the crossing with you.

That is what I am after in everything I do.