GET TO KNOW LIISBET.

Hi Liisa, you are a very young artist, only 20 and you come from Estonia. Tell me something about your background. Where does your art takes root?


Hi! I am very young I agree. As much as I can remember I have always been doing art, drawing, painting. And actually I haven’t never thought to do something else in future, but art. Maybe it comes from genes, because my parents are artists,too. They are not famous but they had lead their whole life together with art. But as I remember they haven't never imposed me neither pressed me to follow their way in art. Nevertheless If i had some specific questions then they are very pleasured to help me.
At the moment I'm a student in the Estonian academy of art and I study painting. But the most important and things about art, well, I learned them in Art School, when I was in high school and just after ending this I started to made drawings like I do.






I’ve seen that some of your works are drown on a Moleskine and each one seems to tell a story. What kind of story do you like to draw?

Usually I bring up my Moleskine when I’m travelling. I love to draw up places, people and all that surrounds me. In the same way other people loves taking photos, I like drawing. This is the story that I want to tell.








One of the first thing that i’ ve noticed about your artwork is the outline. It reminds me a bit of Egon Schiele. Are you influenced by him? Who are the artists that influenced you the most?

I have quite a lot of them and they change with time. When I moved to Lisbon, I found the Paula Rego. I like also a bunch of swedish painters Mamma Andersson, Peter Doig etc. You are perfectly right: I am influenced by Schiele. At the very beginning, when I started drawing “seriously”, I liked him a lot, but now I’m more into contemporary art and younger unknown artists.


Liisa, you’ ve got a great number of paintings and drawings. I really like the way you match the colors. How much are they important to you?

I think it is the way that I see the everyday life. I see colors everywhere, and I would like to put them all into my works. Making art is for me like composing, matching the lines and colors.






On your myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/kruusmagi, you wrote this on your ‘about me’ section: “Would you like to have 2009 calendar with my drawings? I would really like to draw it”. Have you received any request? Do you sell your art? If so, where?

Yes I made 5 calendars, actually i didn’t expect that they would have been so much required. I have sold some of my works and also had collaborations. My works are in Switzerland, USA, Mexico, Ecuador, UK, Sweden, Denmark, Australia.


While browsing through your works, I had the feeling that “I was looking at what you were looking at”. As if they were photos, stolen from a coffee shop, a boutique or a class. So that ordinary life moments became a piece of art. Is this your message?

Yes, as I said before I like the moments that surround ourselves. You are right , I catch pictures from here and there and I love to mix them together, however I also have some leading themes that follow my works. For instance I love rendering in my art the mystical reality that sorrounds us, which probably we don’t see. That “something” it is in the air.









What’ s your next step? What are you going to do with your works? Have you got any up coming show in Estonia?

This is a hard question to answer to. As life changes, my works change too. But I would like to make my works bigger and painting more, working a lot, you know. I suppose one will be with friends on autumn 2009. Though it might be another one in Montreal, Canada, very soon.