Ilga Reke Andersons - By Lelde Kalmite PH.D.

 

Ilga Reke is an artist whose life and work challenge stereotypes. A study of her artistic journey illuminates what is perhaps the most important issue that must be addressed by all artists: the relationship between art and politics. Ilga 's most striking characteristic is her passion for both. 
The defining event of llga's life was witnessing the invasion and occupation of her homeland Latvia during the Second World War, which drove her family into decades of exile, first in Germany and then in the United States. The artist was then in her late teens, a time when many young people are especially moved to political action and often idealism. Fifty years later, her memory of injustice done remains undiminished -in her own words, she has not mellowed but has grown more passionate about her moral convictions, conde1nning tolerance of cultural genocide wherever it appears. Her ethical principles are not mere rhetoric, but are given concrete expression in personal behavior. 
She continued to protest the Russian occupation of Latvia during the postwar decades when many of her American friends and associates may have been disinclined to sympathize or were, perhaps, incapable of understanding. \When the Soviet Union collapsed and Latvia's deplorable economic condition after fifty years of occupation and foreign exploitation was revealed in its entirety, Ilga and her husband Laimonis spent hours every week collecting items such as food, books and clothing and sending literally hundreds of packages, in addition to generous cash donations, to relatives, friends and organizations in Latvia. Their service to the community also extended to a retirement borne in their immediate neighborhood, to which they donated what Ilga calls the greatest charitable gift-time. 
llga is one of the most prolific artists I have known. To her, it seems, making art is as constant and as necessary as eating and drinking. She is a natural born artist, full of spirit, exuberance, inventiveness and the joy of creating. Her whole environment and life experiences are the raw material for her art, and she continually experiments with new approaches, new media, new ideas. As a high school teacher, her lessons often became springboard for her own personal artistic exploration ( or as she herself says, "I enjoyed this project more than the students"). 

All artists are born into as historic frame. In llga's time frame a ruling convention has been the notion of stylistic purity. She has defied this notion by doing exactly what she wants in her art, alternating between depicting flowers from the garden and expressing her horror at nuclear disaster in Ukraine. This can be considered "inconsistent" if our primary interest is in creating a marketable brand image, easily recognized or described by dealers, collectors and critics. .But Ilga’s art is like her life, like all our lives. Our experience alternates between joy and grief, boredom and exhilaration, spontaneous expression and analytical reflection. Ilga's art reflects not only her anger at injustice, but also her sheer pleasure in the beauty of the material world -the world of color, form, line, rhythm and texture. 
Today, Ilga lives with her husband in a modest house in a small town in Wisconsin, wondering how to manage the amazing results of her prolific creativity. I encourage her not to worry about it. Like Picasso, who is described as filling up his houses with so many paintings that eventually he simply bad to move, I say to Ilga, if you have to, just get a new house. A number of her works are now finding their way into Latvian museums and galleries, and many are in private collections throughout the world. 
I hope this lovely collection of reproductions of Ilga's paintings and drawings, embellished with her personal recollections, will broaden public awareness and appreciation of her work. It is an inspiring and lively journal from which all aspiring artists could learn important lessons about what it means to be a true artist. llga Reke is an example of an artist who has remained true to her personal sense of ethics, as expressed in political action, while at the same time giving life to her artistic vision.