Artist Statement
You have your brush, you have your colors,
you paint paradise, then in you go.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Painting initially is a Silent Media. If a painting needs a lot of explanations, it should have been a book, or a song, or lyrics written rather than the painting. I believe that in front of any painting you can feel if you have a connection with this image or not, do you like it or not, whether there are any explanations beside it or none of them.
I used to study at Music College as a chorus conductor and still everything in the world I perceive through a musical harmony, whether this is the harmony of singing voices, music, words or colours. I am trying to transfer the harmony into my paintings. Sometimes it seems to me that my paintings are born by themselves and I just conduct them to the world as a conductor of creative energy that moves throughout my brushstrokes with paints to the images on canvas.
The Red colour that is represented a lot in my paintings symbolises connection with the Universe, with everyone and everything at all levels of the entire world according to Tibetan philosophy. But this is only one of the symbols that are concentrated in the red, as this colour is an extremely contradictive and multi-symbolical one.
There is undoubtedly a very powerful energy is pulsing in the red. In many cultures this colour symbolises passion and love, in Russian language, particularly in folk’s fairy tales, often the word ‘red’ means ‘beautiful’. One of the known Russian writers Fyodor Dostoevsky said ‘Beauty will save the World', so I certainly transform this perception of the ‘red’ as ‘beautiful’ to a symbol of ‘saving the world’ in my works as well.
I believe that in me unconsciously still the red colour echoes with the Russian Revolution, Russian Red flags etc., as I have lived more than half of my life under the Communist’s regime. For me, in this context, the colour red can be a symbol of liberation as well as overcoming some psychological and even physical barriers and boundaries.
I think that images and objects that have been created with passion can spread an immense power that is sometimes found in religious art, a kind of powerful energy that has an ability to alter one’s mental state and even transform reality. Strong feelings and emotions can affect one’s way of thinking and perception of reality and through this can eventually transform the reality around them.
Deep emotions do not depend on any boundaries, such as countries, languages, mentalities, religions, races etc., so emotions and feelings can be considered as an Universal language which can be understood and adopted by everybody in the world despite the place and time or where and when one was born. I believe that within my paintings I create such a ‘surreal reality’, a Universe where everyone is connected, accepted and free.
I place the images of my works into this created reality, in a middle of nowhere, without any recognizable signs of any given time or particular place. I am challenging to depict a pure emotion, a pure human’s spirit. The images are monochromatic; there isn’t any colour of eyes, hair or skin to distract you from the inner content. There is only the quintessence of the inner, an image as a ‘litmus-paper’ of the feeling that can be perceived and understood by everyone.
I suggest that my work is a kind of performance rather than traditional portraiture. I ‘use’ my own face in my works as an actress does and it gives me an unlimited freedom of expression of what I want to convey into them. But I am trying to distance the face from just being self-portraying and the monochrome palette brings certain anonymity to the image.
Humans’ faces can be changed over the centuries and continents but human emotions, I believe, stay the same throughout time. We are all connected through the feelings and through this connection our reality can be transformed to anything we want it to.
I do believe that all the artists are responsible for every single brush stroke they produce within their creativity. Through the centuries art was bringing to the world the Beauty, Light and Hope. All the artists have a choice - what to tribute to the Art World and to the Universe. What a future of the Art World we are creating? What a World we intend to live in tomorrow?
The choice is ours - we all create the world around us. Beauty will save the world and Art is this powerful tool to bring the Beauty and Harmony to the world - to save it.
