Some of the decaying, run-down buildings are so expressive in human wear and tear and so saturated with history that they look like a cut through time. I have always been impressed with the sad beauty of those places and began to incorporate these impressions into my art, working in a context of my current main theme: the interplay and overlapping of architectural elements and landscape. Lyricism of a landscape with its open horizon is opposed to a logical structure of an interior. To communicate the juxtaposition of rough daily reality and idyllic (and idealized) landscape, I often use the differences in luminosity and textures: coarse, expressionistic treatment of the interior is played against smooth, flowing paint in a landscape fragment.

I intend to provoke the viewers into contemplating ever widening gap between man-made world and eternal world of nature that we so often are unable to protect. Gazing through the openings into the “undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns” (Hamlet), a viewer is invited to reflect on our notion of reality. Frame like compositions evoke Platonic myth in which dwellers of the cave are striving to get a glimpse of the outside world.

Irena Kononova