Water Study Drawing

Vera Belyavskaya is a Russian-American expressionist artist and photographer (b. 1985) who currently lives and works in Pompano Beach, Florida. Vera studied painting at Sergey Andriaka's Moscow Watercolour school. After graduating in 2010 and moving with her husband to the United States, she pursued a career in photography, which changed her perspective on art and helped her come back to painting in 2018. The artist's works are inspired by naive art and children's drawings combined with the expressive use of color and energetic mark-making. Vera has always been interested in the raw feeling of unfinished paintings, fast sketches, and schematic brush strokes. She likes simple shapes and palettes that evoke joy in the viewer. She explores everyday objects and outdoor scenes, transforming them into bright-color still lives and imaginary landscapes. Artist's Statement I'm inspired by children's art, cave drawings, expressionism, and naive art. I love mark-making - how a few lines put together on paper create something new and exciting. I ask: how would a child draw a tree or a sandy beach? What colors would she pick? What would she first notice upon seeing something for the first time? These questions are always in my mind when I draw. I'm also moving away from traditional ways of seeing, looking for simplicity: how to paint a landscape without perspective or a still life without realistic value illusion and save only the pure first impression. I experiment to learn how much further I can go with only the essential elements of things but still keep them recognizable for the viewer. Art brings joy and comfort, and looking at a painting can make you happy and feel the world more deeply. This idea attracts me and has become a creative goal for me. I like to work intuitively with my favorite medium - tempera sticks - which combines drawing and painting. This technique also skips mixing colors on a palette which can sometimes be distracting. My other mediums are oil and wax pastels, colored pencils, and paper collages. Daily, I make sketches and quick studies of objects, birds, and landscapes from life and later work from memory on larger paintings.