Keeping in touch with contemporary art: Artists and their mindset
When the new artwork emerges, all eyes are on the artist. It is the artist who creates delicate worlds, placing clues about their lives and their often elusive, dignified mindset into their works. People tend to wonder what the artists value, where they come from, where they get inspiration sparks and what is their driving force. Today, we have an opportunity to take a closer look at how artists portray what they like and what they convey in their works.
Larissa Linhares
– What are your favorite childhood flowers and why?
– Sunflowers are my favorite, I love their brightness.
– What do you usually feel when you paint symbols of flora, botany, flowers?
– I feel a great blessing, and also a strong connection with my soul and life goal.
– What places are your sources of inspiration?
– Nature and music boost my creative process.
– You were born in Brazil, right? Tell us about the tradition when local people throw flowers into the ocean in honor of the Goddess on New Year’s?
– Yes, I was born in Brazil. On New Year’s Eve, at midnight, we have a tradition to give white flowers to the mother of sea to get protection in the new year. We also wear white clothes and jump over 7 ocean waves during the prayers.
– What is your cherished dream?
– I dream about keeping on with my paintings and my law firm, and I also wish me and my family to stay healthy.
Laskina Aleksandra
Laskina Alexandra is a professional Ukrainian artist. Her ultimate goal in the art of painting is beauty and aesthetic impact on the audience. The artist transfers everything that happens in nature onto canvas. Aleksandra paints landscapes, portraits, but has a special love for flowers. This process delights her, cheers her soul and fills her with light and goodness.
Aleksandra’s works project positive energy and depict the radiance of light. Her painting style is Impressionism. It is completely permeated with light and movement, it is unique and attractive. Her favorite flowers to paint are peonies, irises and especially sunflowers. It is no coincidence that Aleksandra’s favorite artist is Van Gogh. He idolized this flower and considered it a symbol of appreciation and gratitude. He associated yellow with friendship and hope. For Aleksandra, this is also a flower of hope for global peace. This is a truly magical sunny flower that will inspire more than one generation of artists. Aleksandra is also a plein air artist, so she relishes spring, when the first flowers bloom. She adores drawing daffodils, tulips, irises and even crocuses. As a child, Aleksandra loved making bouquets of lilies of the valley. These flowers have so much tenderness and fragrance. Whenever she sees lilies of the valley, she immerses into childhood. Peonies and irises look unusually lively and rhythmic in painting. The artist is convinced that every person has their favorite flowers, and they are the best model for artists.
“The Earth Laughs in Flowers” R. Emerson.
Julia iSABEL
Julia iSABEL is a Ukrainian-American contemporary fine artist, graphic designer, and activist located in Connecticut, the USA. She primarily works with Enamel and large-size raw canvases, exploring and celebrating the beauty of non-plastic oceans and empowering women with her monumental female nudes. Her artistic journey, however, is rooted in Impressionism, and her work “Ode to Manet: Peonies from the Balcony” is an evocative example of the classical oil painting steeped in the Impressionist tradition. The piece is a part of the “A Floral Ode: Inspired by Great Masters” collection, showcasing Julia iSABEL’s reverence for the titans of art history, tracing from the Industrial Era to the present day. Through this series, she aims to transcend time, connecting with the masters through the universal image of flowers. “Ode to Manet: Peonies from the Balcony” particularly resonates with this intent, reflecting a deep study of Édouard Manet’s “The Balcony” painting’s palette and his play with color and light, as only Manet could conceive.
Olena Khokhriakova
Olena Khokhriakova is a talented Ukrainian artist who combines various techniques in her works.
She prefers landscapes and still lifes, created with her own technique and filled with special light.
Three interesting facts about the artist
- As an artist, Olena endlessly finds inspiration in numerous impressions surrounding her: nature, landscapes, characters, and city scenes.
But Flowers have always been and will be on top.
Olena sees flowers as the language through which God speaks to us.
For her, painting flowers again and again, penetrating their color, shape, exploring the fragility and grace of each next bud is about the opportunity to experience life itself, about deciphering the universal codes that reveal their sacred meanings to the artist, it is like breathing…
- Olena had an endless love for flowers since early childhood. When she was a child, her dad took her to the forest, not far from their house, and there she actually talked to the flowers and heard their voices. Probably it is this childhood “initiation” into the Magic of Nature that shaped her creativity. Olena never paints mechanically, only “in the flow,” when the Higher Power seems to be moving a hand with a brush… And when she paints flowers from life, Olena always talks to them, penetrating into their nature, essence. And this is when she has the most inspired, resourceful, filling and exciting moment of dialogue with the universe itself, dialogue with eternity, dialogue with God…
- There are always fresh flowers in Olena’s house, no matter what. This is an incredible source of magical, stunningly pure energy, the music of the Earth itself. After all, flowers have no everyday life, they are always dressed festively. Surrounding ourselves with flowers in any form – in floristry, painting, photography, we connect to the true and endless universal Wi-Fi, which is simply vital for everyone on Earth.
Oleksii Didihurov, Art Curator
