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 | Alexander Pavlenko |  |
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Alexander Pavlenko
Alexander was born in 1974 in Izmail. He made his first drawing during his first year in school.
He had seen a reproduction of a painting he liked and he wanted it, but the only way he could have it was to copy it.
In 1984, after finishing art school he took private drawing lessons at the studio of another Izmail artist, where he was
able to further develop his drawing technique.
In 1990 Alexander completed his studies at the Izmail Humanitarian University, but he was dissatisfied with his
level of proficiency. Then in 2002 he saw the Kiev artist, Aleksey Ant, on a TV-show and was so impressed by Ant’s
work that he decided to study under him. He tried three times to meet Ant, but when the meeting finely occurred Ant
was so impressed by the artist’s persistence that he agreed to help Alexander improve his technique. Ant did not have
his own pupils until Alexander, although he was himself a pupil of the well-known academician and painter Nikolay
Andreevich Storozhenko.Ant was always self-centered and concentrated on his own work.
Artistically Ant and Alexander had nothing in common but were close in spirit. Ant changed Alexander’s approach
to art by training him to decide, before touching the brush, what will be the philosophy of the work he is about to produce.
It was Ant’s idea the an artist must be a philosopher, otherwise the artist is only a mechanic. Ant’s paintings reflect a static
style which he calls associative symbolism. Pavlenko’s work, on the other hand, are very dynamic and capture the mood of
Tarkovsky’s films.
The theme of pagan Russia is his favorite theme and reflects his view of life and creativity. He believes that people
should be close to nature and respect her on the level of religion.
Ant helping Alexander improves his technique in oil painting, while Alexander himself was concentrating on improving his
watercolor technique. His technique became so well developed that he is able to achieve any effect desired. The core
of his work is based on composition and internal movement of forms. His work always includes reality and fantasy.
For example, in his painting “Sweet Smack of Secret,” done in the style of pointillism, the girl is real as is the space near her,
but the horizon is portrayed as if from outer space. First he sketches the subject, and then he devotes much time to the
deciding of matters of composition. Very often the completed works bears little resemblance to the original sketches,
but rather reflect the artist’s philosophical view of the subject.
Deep concentration and painstaking work on the painting is invisible to the spectator, to whom everything seems to have
been easily executed and perfected. Of course this is not the true reality of the artist’s work process.
For example, his work “The Wall of Time” illustrates how the artist converts his mental process to the physical.
In this work, no white paint was used. He put translucent layers of paint on a foundation of ground canvas,
which produced a white foundation, and all together created the effect of ancient walls.
He was a prize-winner in the young talent competition of Ukraine in 2003.
He has a personal exhibition in Crimea (Aynasovskiy Museum in Feodosia, in the Voloshin Museum in Koktebel),
in Kiev at the Gallery “Nef”.
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