Lote studied art for eight years – four years in an art high school and after that at the Art Academy of Latvia where she studied painting. There she also started to learn more about illustration and got very interested in that area, although she has liked to write and illustrate her own stories since childhood. After getting her bachelor’s degree she has participated in various exhibitions and residencies in Latvia and abroad.
Her illustrations and comics have been published by Le Monde Diplomatique, Süddeutsche Zeitung Familie, the best children’s book publisher in Latvia – Liels un mazs, comic book publishers kuš! and KUTIKUTI and others. Her illustrations can be seen on various book covers as well as on the windows of cosy cafe’s. She has collaborated with Riga City Council on various projects and her illustrations inhabited the billboards of Riga during Christmas.
The Poet and The Scent (2019) published by Aminori – a book about scents and smells, emotions, memories and writing poems – is Vītiņa’s debut in picture books genre and has received the national book award Golden Apple in the children poetry book category and the Jānis Baltvilks Baltic Sea Region award in Book Art – the most important award for children’s books in Latvia.
Right now she is about to finish her book for teenage readers called The Water Tower. It is going to be a book about a young girl and the vast and lively world of her imagination. The texts for her books she writes herself as she also writes poetry and her debut book Meitene (2020) in poetry came out just last year. In general she is interested in emotions, imagination, in the poetic stuff that we see around and inside ourselves.
The full list of partners involved in LIBERTY are: Art Reach (UK), Altonale GmbH (Germany), Explora, Museo dei Bambini (Italy), CESIE (Italy), Teatrul National Radu Stanca Sibiu (Romania), Aalborg Karneval (Denmark), Center E8, for promoting lifestyles (Serbia), CNC Danse (Nathalie Cornille Company) (France), Pionirski dom – Center za kulturo mladiih (Slovenia), Den Selvejende Institution Swinging Europe (Denmark), Trafo House of Contemporary Arts (Hungary), European Educational Exchanges – Youth for Understanding (Belgium).