Svetlana Simeons
My motto is “Vita brevis, ars longa,” which means ‘Life is short, and art lasts.” In nature, a butterfly lives for just a few days, but it may live for centuries on the Artist’s canvas. The Artist can travel in time; she can create things that have never existed and make them live and be admired by others; she can capture a stunning moment and make it glow forever. I keep these ideas in mind when conceiving and painting my artwork. I try to make the beauty that I see in the world around me or that appears in my imagination continue its life on my canvas, and then to share its charm with others.
My favourite genre is landscape and then still life. I thoroughly enjoy living in a place that generously reveals spectacular nature. I also like to travel and then to transfer my impressions of the beautiful places I visit to canvas. Nature is an endless source for my admiration and my desire to paint. Nature is candidly telling her story. As for my still lifes, they may tell the viewer my story or the viewer’s own one. Before painting a still life, I carefully compose it and try to find objects that I feel should be there to better narrate the emerging story. I never paint random things that I find in my studio. Like a writer who attempts to find more precise and expressive words, I explore for objects that when placed together will create a complex but clear statement.
Oils are my only painting medium. I started painting rather late in my life, and I started with oils. It was clear to me from the start that oils provide for any effect I want – thinness like watercolour washes, opacity and delicateness like pastels, transparency and volume like acrylics. Oils are my true friend, why look for another?
Depending on the painting’s subject, its character and complexity, and the painting’s luminosity, dynamics, and depth, I may use the Old Masters technique (working up from grisaille), or alla prima, or glazing/layering technique, or their combination. I also enjoy doing impasto with a brush or a painting knife, or using some other expressive techniques. Just as the transient beauty that I want to depict has so many manifestations, for me there are so many means of rendering it in oils. Some may say that the wide variety of my techniques downplays my personal style, yet I am happy that the Supreme Creator, whom we follow when creating our artwork, is not concerned about this kind of limitation.
