The book by Gundega Cēbere (Master of Arts) tells about the life and works of a painter Jānis Skučs.
During the second half of the last century Skučs worked almost exclusively as a marine artist. The sea attracted him with its inexhaustible nuances, and the artist’s interest was not only in the superficial depiction of seascapes, but he was also drawn by the essential: the sea as a space with depth and suffused with light, and devoid of all that is extraneous. It seems as if the painter, having extracted from nature the precise details, created his own unified system of images in varying rhythms, and in his seascapes the sea is portrayed without the usual characteristic elements such as fishing boats and fishing nets onshore. Continuing in a romantic vein and highlighting the dynamic motion of the water, the sea is almost always shown as slightly ruffled or in a storm, on days both sunny and cloudy, and it is not only the obvious manifestations of natural phenomena that are presented, but the subject has unleashed dramatic feelings and heightened emotions.
The reflection by fellow artist Arturs Ņikitins that “Skučs was regarded as the finest anatomist of the sea waves” is substantiated by his painstaking devotion to his work, as well as the recognition of the public.