Mother Sculpture

I have always been interested in the invisible in people.Their relationships, feelings and interactions. Art is my opportunity to explore them. When I first started drawing, what I found most important in portraying live models was capturing their thoughts and feelings. It was as if the picture became much more accurate when I had managed to examine what’s intangible in the first site. I have been drawing since the age of 16, but it wasn’t until I was 23 that I decided this will be my profession. I was admitted to the National Academy of Art in Sofia. I hold a Master’s Degree in Poster and Visual Communication. Ever since I graduated I’ve mainly worked in the field of graphic design and I have created a number of posters commissioned by major national institutions and some for international contests. Among all of them I am very fond of my work for the Plovdiv State Opera. When I decided to apply for the Academy, my initial choice was Industrial design and it was back then when I first discovered clay and made my first sculptures. Taking up graphic design later on did not stop me from working on various self-commissioned projects with clay from time to time, but only recently did I go back to sculpture profoundly. It was the urge to explore the intangible between people caused by past and recent personal experiences. Choosing metal came naturally to me. The main reason for that was the lost communication with my father. The first sculptures I created were made of objects and parts collected by him through the years. A massive collection. Something quite typical for men of his generation here in my country – “always be prepared to fix something and make it work for at least a 100 years more.” These objects became my first meaningful discourse with him. I would find metal scraps and they would evoke childhood memories, and then I would bring them back to life and fill in the missing words and gestures that me and him never actually exchanged. My muse was “the unexpected”, the surprise. When I came across something I didn’t even know was missing and I managed to give the vital spark to it, to fill it with sense and movement, it really made me feel like a discoverer. This is also what I aim for in my connection with people through sculpture. To make them feel that my artworks were not created but found by chance. That they self-emerged and at the same time that they have always existed.