Any Painting is a Drawing of Yourself

In Kristina Smelova’s painting, the impressionist methods are clearly visible. Working mostly with the palette knife, the artist doesn’t care about carefully painting out individual objects, but conveys the unsteady, momentary state of space as a whole. Applying wide pasty strokes, she seems like covers her own feelings and experiences with color relief. At the same time, Smelova’s painting is not constrained by the theme of public relations or politics.

Kristina Smelova. «Winter fishing».

«I don’t like politics; I’m not inspired by the revolutions. And how can they be linked to my landscapes?»

For the artist, only emotion is important as a response to the charm of being, to the clarity of rapidly changing, but masterfully noticed details. She admires all that is on this earth, which does not cease to admire her.

«Initially, everything comes from nature. To notice beauty and tell about it is my goal, work, and pleasure. But I don’t aspire to an excessively realistic reproduction of reality. I don’t see the point of copying as there is a photo for this».

Improvising freely and ingenuously, Smelova always remains herself. Therefore, her paintings, even if it is an image of a city street, have a special, private character; and in the faces of young models, the features of Kristina herself are easily guessed.

Kristina Smelova. «Summer»

«Art is a self-portrait of a person who paints real world reflecting it through himself. By and large, we paint ourselves, bringing our own attitude to the fore. The most important thing is to be honest in your profession, not to try to think out anything. Just to be, and live it».

In her works, Kristina Smelova doesn’t convict anyone and doesn’t prove someone’s right. She just follows her own taste, which almost never fails her. And if there is a failure, the viewer doesn’t see it.

«When I start to doubt, I mentally draw other possible options: what happens if I put the light in another way or compile differently? If I understand that it will be even worse, I ask myself the same topic and make sketches again. If I see the same in the pictures, then the doubts were in vain».

Landscape

In the landscape works of Kristina Smelova, the first violin is played by color, and lines and contours are nothing more than a subtle accompaniment to the triumph of color.

«I don’t think by straight, even categories, I don’t like drawing straight lines. Of course, if it is necessary to build a general composition, I can picture something smooth, draw a clear line, but in most cases, I do without it».

Working mostly with big spots without emphasizing the details, Smelova most often uses light restrained colors of silver spectrum, with which she manages to convey the frosty trembling of the winter air (‘Contrazhur’, ‘Winter Fishing’, ‘Quiet Day’, ‘Frosty Day’, ‘Winter’, ‘Winter in Pirogovo’, ‘Winter in the Uday River’, ‘Winter Park’), the wet weight of the thaw (‘Warm Winter’), a summer morning filled with foggy moisture (‘Foggy Morning’), a moist air environment after the heavy rain (‘The Rain has Stopped’). But most often the artist paints the winter.

Kristina Smelova. «Freezing day».

«To tell the truth, I love spring, but winter is the best to be shown in the pictures. And what about the summer, I don’t like it; it’s too hot and there’s nothing to paint as everything is equally green».

Snow, however, only at first glance seems pure white; in fact, it has dozens of bluish, dark bluish, and grayish shades. However, Smelova is not limited to the cold gamma; adding to it yellow, ocher, bloody bright red colors, she repeatedly enhances the impression due to the expression of color. The sunset against the background of a snow-covered landscape looks very expressive (‘Sunset’); and water and fire in a sky heavy with storm clouds convey a mood of anxiety, unwittingly increasing the viewer’s pulse (‘Storm Clouds’, ‘Storm Cloud’). It seems like we can hear the thunder of lightning; we watch the air getting darker and thicker; we feel the first drops of rain on our bodies...

Kristina Smelova. «Thunderclouds»

«In general, the most beautiful paintings are drawn at sunset and at sunrise; although I like to sleep in the morning. I remember, it was very hard for me to paint ‘Mists’ (‘Сobweb morning’, ‘Morning fog’, ‘Fog 3’) as it was at 5 am. The evening also has its difficulty – the sun sets quickly, so in the open air I do mostly sketches, and then I draw a complete painting directly in the studio».

Kristina Smelova. «Morning fog»

The painting ‘Red Tulips’ which is a junction of Impressionism and Fauvism is interesting from the point of view of the art techniques choice. Contrasting green and red spots do not disturb the well thought out faded harmony, but add dynamics and realism to canvas: after a cold snowy winter, the spring moves to the center. Very soon there will be warm days...

However, the Kristina Smelova’s summer is not endless greenery. The artist actively works with blue, gray, red and brown masses, taking away the rampant greenery into the unexpected color scheme (‘Pirogovo. Summer’, ‘Ruins of the Ancient Park’).

The source of the inspiration for Kristina is, first of all, her hometown, but Smelova goes away from its modern frenzied rhythm. Her Belaya Tserkov is a river, the view on which opens directly from the main avenue, city parks, ancient temples, which seem to dissolve in a vibrating substance sometimes thick as a kissel, sometimes transparent and ringing (‘Preobrazhensky Cathedral after the Rain’, ‘Ruins’, ‘Chinese Bridge’, ‘Alexandria Falls’). Kristina’s fellow countrymen may confirm things appearing as a poetic fantasy, a visual myth on her canvases, are actually much more like reality than one can imagine.

Kristina Smelova. «Transfiguration Cathedral after the rain»

In addition to urban landscapes, Smelova, who is an urbanized resident by birth, schooling and personality formation, also paints many rural landscapes (‘Courtyard’, ‘Lyubich Panorama’, ‘Matyushi Village’, ‘Golden Autumn’).

«When I lived in a village in Chernigov region, I was really happy. I was inspired there by everything, absolutely everything: the cherries blooming, the corn grains growing. That’s why, at the first opportunity I returned to the village again, but this time I choose the village Bezuglyaki near Belaya Tserkov. There are vegetables in the garden, chickens, flowers, garden, bright morning sun ... It’s all mine, my own».

In Smelova’s landscape works one more feature is observed: her view is often directed to the domes of churches that appear on the background and sometimes in the foreground of the paintings (‘Monastery Farm’, ‘Lavra’, ‘Winter Fishing’, ‘Church over the River’, ‘Spring’, ‘Boguslavsky Motive’, ‘Ancient Church’). It seems like one more effort and one will remember where this vague but painfully familiar image could be seen not on a frozen canvas, but in life. Such works purify the soul; it is not pictures, but more like windows in the world, returning to the knowledge of homeland, to the memory of the ancestors.

Kristina Smelova. «Monastic farm»

Still Life

The chamber lyricism and clear simplicity of Smelova’s creativity are shown, first of all, in her still lifes. The artist praised on her canvases bunches of ‘Isabella’ grapes, strong autumn ‘Mushrooms’, ripe red ‘Watermelons’, bright orange ‘Sunflowers’, but more often she draws flowers: ‘Irises’, ‘Phloxes’, ‘Daffodils’, ‘Tulips’, and ‘Roses’.

Kristina Smelova. «Still life with white tulips»

«While I didn’t start growing by myself, I couldn’t understand how beautiful they were. Well, it’s just a rose, nothing special. Looking at it, you can’t experience that ecstasy, unless you have grown it yourself. But when you observe how a huge, beautiful bud grows out of small cuttings, you start to treat it differently, you love it in another way, and that means you paint in a different way. In fact, I don’t just draw a rose; I paint what I put into it. Any still life is to some extent a drawing of yourself. Each sees an aster, a sunflower, a corn in his own way and draws in own way too».

The same applies to the image of people.

Nude

«I see some particular person not like somebody else sees him. We all see him differently, so, we draw him also differently, as well as we think differently about him».

The meaning embedded in this or that picture, like the technique of performance, changes with the growth and development of the personality of the artist herself. If in student works (‘Elvira’, ‘Nude’, ‘Etudes of Models’) she simply and naturally admires the naked female beauty, then in later works poetics and subtle lyricism appear; with a rather limited choice of colors, the images are more and more light and harmonious (‘Moon and Melon’, ‘Summer’, ‘Scarlet Sails’, ‘Bay leaf’, ‘Near the window’).

Kristina Smelova. «Moon and melon».

The unpretentious composition does not overwhelm the canvas, and the play of blue and silver shades immerses the viewer into impressionistic color plasma with a clear balance of tones where there is no plot, but there is a gentle, quivering state, seems like melting in the crystal metaphysics of moonlight.

Composition

Although the reflection of the enchanting pictures of nature or the peaceful state of the human soul prevails in Smelova’s works, is not a dogma for her. In the life of the artist, there are periods when the romantic perception of the world is reduced and a more mature understanding of life comes instead. Then the plot, the idea the artist sends to the world comes to the foreground.

It is hard to remember such facts. But it is they that make it possible to understand Kristina Smelova more broadly. The most terrible shock in the life of a young artist was the death of her daughter. In the first months after the tragedy, Kristina didn’t touch a brush at all. And then there were pictures, the names of which speak for themselves ‘To be a pawn’, ‘Commemoration’, ‘Alone’. Even her apples bleed (‘Savior’).

Kristina Smelova. «Savior»

But time passes and if the wound doesn’t heal then the new, philosophical understanding and thinking of life come. Without excessive edification, the artist reflects on the frailty of being (‘Beginning’, ‘Circle of Life’, ‘From Beginning to End’). At the same time, her canvases reflect the search for truth, but not the jawing.

Kristina Smelova. «From the beginning to the end».

«The depth of one’s own philosophical perception of the world depends on the experience acquired during the lifetime, and all this is reflected in our work».

And life is constantly creating a new reality. Since the birth of the youngest daughter, Kristina has not the past, but the present and the future (‘Sleeping Tired Toys’, ‘Apple Tree’, ‘Peephole’) on her canvases. And this is the main task of being.

Kristina Smelova. «Tired toys are sleeping».

Abstraction

As mentioned earlier, Smelova enters into a kind of polemic with traditional painting and this is most clearly seen in her abstract works. Kristina created ‘Rhythms’, ‘Medicine’, ‘Accent’, ‘Nude’ with sweeping swift strokes.

Kristina Smelova. «Accent»

The adept of the clear alignment of the composition and the precise balance of colors, she introduces into her abstractions a womanly heretical courage, synthesizes and encodes her own artistic experience in a new way. While portraying the invisible, but imaginary, the artist uses either light , or heavy, very material colors .

«Yes, I sometimes use abstraction. But, please, don’t ask me what I want to tell by these pictures. They carry only an emotional, but not a semantic load».

Kristina Smelova. «Rhythms 21»