My art always arises on the edge of personal internal conflict. Usually, an image comes to mind – a result of subconscious work – and I start unwinding back, trying to find the sore spot, searching for connections.
I grew up in a society with gender inequality, which gave impetus to my search for self-identity. But there are no perfect societies. In the modern world with its consumerism and society of spectacle, an individual’s life from childhood functions as a mechanism of suppression and alienation from oneself.
Embodied in my characters, I reduce the distance between the artist and the viewer, finding in my own experience and psycho-emotional state a point of access to the universal issues permeating the network of every person’s soul.
I speak of the fear of existential encounter with oneself, the transformation of personality, its inevitable lack of freedom in the game according to the rules of society, and of course, the search for hope.
There are no straightforward statements in my art, it is symbolic. All depicted characters are objects without pronounced identification. As if through a keyhole, the viewer observes their lives in softly glowing, almost sacred space.
Engaged in dialogue with classical art, with its aesthetics, which perfects the imperfect world to an ideal, I make recognizable images work by different rules, creating a surreal effect. Inspired by the techniques of academic painting, I attach primary importance to light, as it is diffused in the air by the painters of the Delft School of the Golden Age, as well as to the dramatic contrasting light of Caravaggio.