A rarely public-facing artist, and even less inclined to “exhibit” his private life, his entire life is inseparable from the act of making art. Almost constantly present in his studio, which occupies nearly half of a rustic wooden house in the outskirts of Vilnius, the artist paints the Riešė landscape visible through his studio window. Into this persistent motif enter a cow, a pianist, objects by Marcel Duchamp, Noah from Michelangelo Buonarroti’s work, interpretations of other canonical masterpieces, and abstracted, mythologized figures emerging from the imagination of an artist withdrawn from the contemporary world. Each theme and motif is investigated with sustained attention and continuity, built through a slow accumulation of layers and tonal nuances. By reinterpreting seminal works from art history within the recurring landscape, the artist develops an ongoing dialogue with the past, unfolding what he has termed Similarity in Dissimilarity - a concept used as the title for exhibitions in 2008, 2012, and 2017, including collaborative projects with painters Algimantas Kuras and Raimondas Martinėnas, as well as a solo exhibition in 2017. Viačeslavas Jevdokimovas-Karmalita was born in 1946 in Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine. His pseudonym, Karmalita, derives from his mother’s maiden name; she came from Western Ukraine. The artist’s family originates from Galicia, a historically multicultural region shaped by the coexistence of Polish, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Romanian, and Jewish cultures. Initially drawn to cinema and film directing, Viačeslavas later chose visual art as his primary field after settling in Lithuania. In 1980, he graduated from the Lithuanian State Art Institute (now the Vilnius Academy of Arts), specializing in fresco and mosaic. He currently lives and works in Riešė, Vilnius County, Lithuania.