Lydia Mei

Lydia Mei was an artist, who continuously tried to get to know the essence of different art styles. After the architectural studies in St.Petersburg she became a drawing teacher, but first of all Mei is known as one of the most outstanding water-colour artists of Estonia. No doubt, Mei also wanted to get to know the possibilities of oil painting, but such examples are rare and therefore almost not known.
This work on the contrary to the expectations is not an experiment in another technique, but a sophisticated city view, using resolutely the features of oil colours. The artist has been standing somewhere near the Nõmme ski jump towers and has looked down on the future residential area of Mustamäe, where at that moment were only a couple brownish-yellow cottages. In addition to the historically and topographically important document that shows us a novel picture of the area that we only connect to the thickly placed and indefinite highrisers, Mei also plays skilfully with the texture and paint layers that are characteristic to oil paintings.