Irina Abeslamidze

My Paintings Begin with a Moment That Stayed with Me
Some paintings are born quickly. Others stay within me for more than ten years — and some are still there, because their time has not yet come.
A painting usually begins long before I pick up a brush. First, there is an image, a feeling, or a thought that will not let me go. Very often, I already know which technique I see the future work in. For me, technique is not a way to demonstrate skill. It is part of the idea itself. Each painting tells me what it needs to become.
Sometimes it is a quiet apple tree shimmering in the morning light and filling me with an overwhelming sense of wonder. Sometimes it is the sea after a storm or a bicycle beside an old house in Provence. And sometimes it is a question I have been thinking about for years, which gradually takes the form of a philosophical painting.
This is why my works can be very different. I paint landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and works with philosophical meaning. I do not set myself the task of working within one subject or repeating a solution I have already found.
At the moment, I am thinking about a new series of paintings devoted to dance. I want to show not simply a beautiful movement, but a moment of inner explosio...