Ariana Gordienko
Essex, UK
American Art Collector My Inspiration
I’ve been working on this painting during long weeks of lockdown isolation. Obsessive questions were swirling in my head: What if we all are wiped off from the Earth by this pandemic virus? What will be left after us? After you? An empty wooden stretcher with no canvas on it because there is nobody left to paint a new work on it? Your phone charger? A daylight bulb from your studio? Sunglasses? For how long are we here? Is there any time left to paint a new work?
With no answer I just kept working on this painting…if a world disaster comes and mankind disappears, then powerful nature will take over empty places and assimilates any elements of Anthropocene as a failed attempt to dominate.
My Design Strategy
To find a perfect composition for this painting, I simply followed my imagination where I saw different pictures of potential apocalypses, so I tried to synchronise those visions with my current life as if the worst scenario has already happened. After sufficient amount of attempts to find a dramatically dark background for this work, I ended up in my garden lit with the dazzling sunshine and with only three objects, which I use on a daily basis and which represent quite common things familiar to anyone who belongs to our civilization. The question is, do we really need all these endless piles of stuff we are diligently gathering and cluttering during our lives? Once again, what will be left after you? What counts?
My Working Process
I usually start new work with browsing numerous sketchbooks where I write down ideas from my head, fascinating facts I read and words I’ve heard, titles of books I’d like to read and poems I want to remember— it is truly precious stuff kept on hold in those sketchbooks. Then I do sketches to outline an idea for a particular work, then I take numerous (about 200) photos until I feel I have captured what I need. I create very realistic paintings so a good reference photo is a must, but I have to go beyond the reference image to achieve an inspiring result. Realistic art is not a copy of a photograph but a mirror to an artist’s imagination of a parallel world.
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Contact Details
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Email: arina@arina-art.com
Website: www.arina-gordienko.com
My Inspiration
Cruelty of the Sun is my personal attempt to deal with the climate catastrophe, the emotions caused by global warming and the uncertainty of what the world will look like in the near future. I believe that climate change and the accompanying ecological crisis—also known as the sixth great extinction—is the biggest problem of our times. Art should sensitize you to the challenges posed by the present and help you find a new language that fits the human condition in times of climate crisis. It should be a language that transcends both naive utopian thinking and the paralyzing fear of extinction.
My Design Strategy
Painting allows me to unite the contradictory: elaborately planned