“I believe deep down in their
hearts, everybody wants to be a prince or princess.”
Anna Berezovskaya
The
Russian artist Anna Berezovskaya paints wonderlands that
allow people to relive the magical and mysterious joys of childhood, a welcome
respite from the usual harsh realities that confront us. As she explained to the Hong Kong Magazine
“When I was little, my parents were always busy
working so I was left home alone all the time. Being an imaginative kid I loved
reading fairy tales and then started creating my own. When I became a painter,
those fantasies naturally reflected in my paintings.”
Berezovskaya comes from the
small town of Jakhroma some 60 kms north of Moscow and from the age of 17 has
had to make her own way in the world. As she has said “My parents sent me to
art school when I was nine, but they never wanted me to pursue a painting
career. I had to be self-supported when I turned 17 though, so I had no choice
but to produce paintings and sell as many as I could.”
In the ensuing eight years Berezovskaya
has become something of a darling in art world commanding prices in the five
and six figure range for her work. Work’s that present a fairy tale fantasy. As
she told Singapore’s
City Nomads “I do not portray real life; instead I portray my own
life, my own world. I offer an alternate world and try to get people to believe
in it. And my paintings are meant to be timeless.”
But like all good fairytales
there is a darker underside, a moral, perhaps, lurking under the surface. As
she told the Singapore
Art Gallery Guide about her latest exhibition “I still draw on
stories that I love from my childhood but in terms of development I realize I
have developed and grown and my ideas are becoming more interesting, sharper,
more developed. With my new series Edge of the World I
wanted to invest the works with a sense of what people value, what is worth
doing. I have done this using the style and techniques I have always used, but
perhaps with a stronger sense of symbolism and a greater awareness of my own
artistic style.”
And then there is the apocryphal
story she tells of a painting’s sale. “Once they exhibited a painting of mine
of a fat woman staring at a lot of delicious food locked in a cage. A woman
came to me and told me she would buy that painting to hang on the wall of her
daughter’s bedroom to urge her to go to diet! I had never thought my painting
could serve such a practical purpose.”
Berezovskaya’s current
exhibition Edge of the World is on show a Singapore’s Redsea Gallery
until the 14th of June.
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