As it becomes obvious from the title, light is the 'hero' of this series, as well as it's negative form - a shadow. I hear quite often, and with grate pleasure, from those, who acquired my pictures, that the light comes out of them, especially at the dusk.

Less obvious but far from being less important is mutability of forms and shapes, deliberately embedded in and declared by every painting. None of the objects is fixed on the surface of canvas, but rather slightly moving inside it, actually dissolving 2d surface of the picture and making it to breeze.

Even less obvious but even more important to me is a background composition structure, almost a grid, which breakers nameless universe of jet untouched canvas into several harmonic rectangles crossed by two or three diagonals suggesting ascending and descending movement.

Any part or all of this rational construction can be later adjusted, distorted or even ignored during creative process. I noticed that the more rigid is this rational 'skeleton' of the picture, the more freedom I have when feeling it out with emotional, intuitive content.

It is hard to overestimate the importance of visual grammar in arts, traditional in a very broad meaning, developed, worded out or just executed in a big span of time, from Stone Age to 20th Century Avantgard, and I do believe it must be maintained, used and developed, not neglected, by the future generations of artists.

Regarding artist's media, I am rather conservative. After having tried many new and unusual combinations of materials I came back to a powerful classic pair - oil and canvas.

All said above applyes to another series of my paintings - 'Shapes of Music', which may look very different, at a first glance, from the 'Lights and Shadows', and it is as a matter of fact different in many respects, mainly in turms of it's subject, content or a 'hero', but the creative approach, spiritual and mental tools are the same.

With any questions, comments or requests please email to:

andrei@andreikovalev.com