In the painting “Fields” one can see Lapajne’s individual thin sensitivity and attachment to his native land since most of his paintings are made of mud for wetlands of his native Slovenia. 

Tone Lapajne was a versatile Slovenian artist. He started as a sculptor and ended up as a painter, but a very special sort of painter. He invented the “earth on canvas” technique. The wetlands around Ljubljana, with their many earth colours, were a great source of inspiration for him. 

This Slovenian sculptor and painter was born in 1933. Not only did he paint earth, but he utilized earth and mud from wetlands to create his pictures. He searched there for different colours of earth. (There are at least 50 colours.) To the earth he added some black or some olive paint. Because of his use of earth in his pictures, he became “a sort of painter”. He used to say: “The earth nurtures me both materially and spiritually! I pick up some earth… this matter which is a part of universe, and lay it on canvas. Cracks in the earth are scary,” he said, “but the rest…”

At the memorial exhibition Memory of Earth, 2016 in Ljubljana, Tone Lapajne was described as an artist who created statues, installations, and paintings. He used concrete, iron, wood, and finally his wetland earth for his artworks. He was in constant touch with nature and deeply interested in natural materials but “material does not create a work of art, artist does”. 

What did he say? His slogan came from the Bible. “We all come from dust (earth) and we all return to dust (earth).” “Expression is not only in material, the artist’s touch is important.”