Vanilla Sky Print

Name: creative pumpkin Personal statement: Painting has been my greatest passion since the age of five. My parents both have a creative vein, my mother being an architect and an expert in classical drawing and history of arts, and my father - an ardent photographer in every spare second of his free time. Thus, my parents have always cultivated my artistic development, considering it essential for an overall personality formation. They chose schools with strong focus on arts (paining, photography and sculpture, as well as history of arts). Visiting diverse contemporary and classical art exhibitions was on a weekly program. Furthermore, on several occasions I had been taking academic drawing lessons from artists, art teachers and architects. Art was one of my major subjects at the Vienna International School, where I could experiment with different artistic techniques and methods and, under the thoughtful guidance of Prof. Derek Pigrum, was able to evolve my own style of painting. During the last two school years I kept a research work book - a kind of an artistic diary, which finally became a massive two-volume in-depth study of contemporary art movements and analysis of individual paintings of different artists, as well as of own work. At graduation I presented 15 acrylic and oil paintings, as well as sculptures and graphics in a class exhibition. Before following a general management career path, I had been studying art and graphic design at a Viennese art school (kuenstlerische Fachhochschule)followed by Multimedia Studies. The most valuable skill I acquired during that period of time is sketching of human bodies at weekly nude drawing classes. I could work on my style and see it evolve. Now painting remains one of the main passions of my life. Sometimes I do not paint for months, until suddenly an experience, emotion or a moment inspires me to snap the canvas and a box of paints and express it, getting hold of the sensation before it passes. I see a lot of parallels between art and life, one being the distorted reflection of the other. Nothing in life is more beautiful, but at the same tragic, destructive, intense, fascinating, inspiring and delicate than art, nothing but the life itself. Art reflects the miracles and tragedies of our lives, with their unpredictability, contradictions, emotional rollercoasters and unique individual experiences.