Lida Rhea

Lida Rhea is a plein air painter based in Slovenia, working in oil and pastel in a contemporary manner that draws on both impressionism and expressionism, grounded in classical academic training.
In her work she brings together plein air practice, a classical approach to painting and digital media to create her images. At the heart of her painting practice is an ongoing series of small-format études painted directly from life in Slovenia, the Alps and on the Adriatic coast.
Painted quickly, in broken colour and open brushwork, each étude is a dated record of a particular light and moment.
Together they explore memory, and how a remembered place is never quite the place itself.
Central to her work is liminality in space, time and the human psyche. She paints forest edges and riverbanks, dusk and dawn, and the in-between states of mind of the people who increasingly appear among her landscapes. These thresholds resonate with the instability of our own time, when so much feels suspended between what has been and what is yet to come.
She is also the founder of the Air Art Retreats method, presented in the 2026 University of Ljubljana Press volume Air Art Retreats: Creative Wellbeing at the Intersection of Art, Psychology, and Educ...

Academically trained (diploma, 2000), she later studied in the studios of Balyasnikov and Loginov in St Petersburg, and has exhibited in group shows since 2010,
2026 University of Ljubljana Press volume Air Art Retreats: Creative Wellbeing at the Intersection of Art, Psychology, and Education