Heatherleys student, Alla Samarina, is holding her first solo show ‘Elements of Life’, opening this evening.
PV 12th March, show continues until 29th March
The Muse at 269, 269 Portobello Road, W11 1LR
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Alla Samarina grew up in Saint Petersburg (Russia). She was involved in the underground art scene of the late 1980’s that inspired the New Academy Art Movement, the Soviet rock band Kino, Pop Mechanika and the group Kolibri (Alla, a member from 1988-90).
She left Russia in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union and came to London. During the 1990’s, working as a fashion model – muse to the world-renowned milliner Philip Treacy. Alla also worked with the stylist Isabella Blow for Vogue and other publications.
Always an Artist, but a latecomer to painting and drawing, for the past few years she’s been studying at Heatherley’s School of fine art in Chelsea. Her work is mainly figurative with live portraiture; she also experiments with different media and varying degrees of abstraction.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
I am a figurative artist and I was always fascinated by the “art of seeing”, as our vision is more than what meets the eye. In my work I try to interpret the essence of the subject in front of me rather than just representing a complete form. I particularly like to work from life, where I translate the reality constructing the image by limiting the overwhelming amount of visual information, sometimes to just a few elements or colours, from which the brain’s visual system is free to spontaneously complete the full image, filling the blind spots and automatically correcting distorted information into emotive narrative.
I think art that relies on these elements of visual processing can lead to a more emotionally compelling cognitive visual experience.
