the garlic Drawing

My name is Marina Alaeva and I am from Izhevsk, an industrial town in Russia. I’ve been painting from my early childhood, thus my parents sent me to art school. I remember my excitement at the first lesson there; I thought that was like a secret society for very particular and gifted children — but they were just kids and a school like any other. That place sealed my fate and influenced my choice of future profession. I graduated from the Faculty of Industrial Design at the Udmurt State University where I studied academic painting and drawing as well as design fundamentals. It must have been the first place where I realised my passion for painting. I then graduated from the Faculty of Architecture at the Kazan State University of Architecture and Engineering. Architecture seemed to be profitable and helpful for both myself and society — a career I have been involved in for 12 years. I am grateful to the heavens for this experience. I am sure that this experience has been successful, however it does not succeed in allowing me to fully release my creative energies; I could not get enough artistic freedom in architecture — I couldn’t get enough color in that. Exactly color has great influence on my world-view. Just color appears in my artworks as my response to the outer world. People know one of Goethe’s most famous quotes about music and architecture. I would rephrase it but for painting. Painting is music that you could see and music is painting that you could hear. I am quite seldom when creating my pictures in silence, I need music to get inspiration and self-confidence. In my student years, I preferred gouache, rather than watercolor, because of its capacity for sharp contrasts and an effect of mural (it can look like a fresco or a mosaic). Some of my first mature pictures were created with gouache, but then I began to paint with acrylic. People say my manner reminds them of a kaleidoscope: my brush strokes seem like coloured pieces of glass. I am always interested in visual effects and the visual perception of solid and spatial shapes. Every physical object, in my view, is a battlefield of light and shadow. I get excited with shadows; they contain a rich palette of raging colors, in contrary to academic art. I never use green, brown, black, and violet colors that were made in a factory — I feel they only make a picture become dull and blind. My preferences are pretty conventional: still life, portrait, and landscape painting.