The artistic experience of this artist is varied: she initially chose the path of a musician-instrumentalist at the National M. K. Čiurlionis School of Art, later she gave in to temptation and switched to art. She graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Arts with a degree in fresco-mosaic studies, and now she works extensively in the fields of oil painting, watercolors, and ceramics.
She usually chooses natural motifs for her paintings, with images of people – mostly women and children – also integrated into the natural environment as if they were part of its life. The artist’s gaze is alert and attentive to nature, her landscape panoramas encompass distance, space, the sky above the horizon, and the play of shapes and colors of the vegetation, flowering grasses and plants that flourish right beneath the feet. O. Juškienė is not unfamiliar with animalistic motifs, which is extremely rare in our painting today; characteristic images of animals and birds are rendered with attention, they are like portraits of a kind. In her compositions, the author weaves together vegetal, animalistic, and figurative elements to create a kind of narrative. Sometimes the illustrative element in her work takes precedence, especially as the manner of painting is quite realistic, and sometimes there is a deliberate emphasis on the decorative, simply to break away from the natural routine of “depiction” or the everyday habits of painting. She likes a variety of colors, often open colors, their playful combinations and contrasts, although O. Juškienė’s paintings are by no means characterized by expressionistic deformation, tension, or aggressiveness of expression. The artist seems to transport her memorable sights and impressions into the space of dreams and visions. The imagery of her paintings, the motifs of nature and fairy tales, nostalgic or idyllic scenes reflect the artist’s romanticized worldview, her quest for harmony with herself and the world.
