All of us come from the land of childhood and, in due course, we all will get back to it.
Childhood is the time of fairy-tales, dreams and fantasy. This inner state, when you feel the necessity to draw, to paint or to model and in this way to express oneself, is hard to put into words. Children's creative work, revealing their pure minds and artistic souls, is so nice and sincere that we, grown-ups, have to appreciate and to encourage it.
Children's art is like an open book, which can be read by everyone. It helps to understand a child and to deal with him or her. Art is an integral part of childhood as well as human life on the whole and it makes life richer, more significant and unique.
Children's art gallery in Druskininkai is the only such place in Lithuania. It has been founded by Robertas Žukauskas, an artist and art teacher, a participant of Lithuanian children's art exhibitions of many years, honorary and jury member of many international competitions.
This gallery is meant for fostering beauty as well as other spiritual values. Moreover it represents Lithuania since its visitors are not only native people but foreign guests coming to Druskininkai.
Druskininkai gallery performs some other functions. It organises Lithuanian and a small scale international exhibitions, competitions, summer schools, it publishes catalogues and reviews of these events. Besides it hosts a Lithuanian department of disabled children and young people's art, called "Guboja", it is the Lithuanian representative of the so-called Very special arts international and has contacts with analogue organisations in Denmark, the Netherlands, Russia, Czech Republic, Poland.
Regular exhibitions of the art of disabled young people take place in Druskininkai, that reveal their unique inner world. Every drawing or a piece of applied art shows so much of pain and hope, grief and love, that one finds himself in as if in a charmed kingdom. This is creation of people touched by the magic stick of a fairy Fantasy.
The activities of the gallery and its spiritual impact have been highly evaluated by professor Irena Voinar from Warsaw university, a responsible member of both: the International Society for Education through Art and the Association Mondiale des Sciences de L'Education as well as other professors, art critics, academicians, art teachers and last but not least children from vary many countries of the world.
