Painter
While It Lasts, a series of oil paintings by Sanita Balode. Exhibition view, Voss Culture House, 2026.
Sanita Balode
Oil paintings from the mountains and rivers of Voss, Norway
A painting holds what language can't quite reach. That feeling just before you commit,
when the edge is still an option.
The instinct that says go further,
go higher, trust the fall.
When that painting becomes yours,
the room around it is never quite the same again.
All I Want, oil on canvas, 2025.
Inspiration is everywhere
I grew up in Latvia, by wild white beaches and a sea that never behaves. I still go back, just to stand in that water and bring the colours home with me.
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Now I find it in the mountains outside my studio in Voss, Norway. In a river that never moves the same way twice. In snow that comes early and stays too long.
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Weather changing at midday. A river pushing through rock. These are the things I keep painting, not because I can explain them, but because they hold something worth pausing for.
I work in oil, layer over layer, until something true comes through. It is how I slow down enough to listen, to myself, to the mountain, to whatever is moving in.
I build the layers up, then let parts of them go, the way snow covers a landscape and melts back to show what was underneath. Nature marks the land. It marks us too. Listening closely to that is where the work comes from.
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Sanita Balode
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