Art in the bar
Dmitry Apatin: Bodyscapes and Shadows
Preview: Friday 29th March 7pm
Continues until Saturday 18th May
Open Wednesday – Saturday 11am – 7pm
‘I am an architect and an artist. My tools of choice have been soft
pastels and oil paints for quite some time now. In recent years I mostly
travel between Wales, Serbia and Georgia, and while oil painting is a
bit challenging on the road, pastels have always helped out with my
artistic needs.
I was born in Moscow and that is where I fell in love with art. After
drawing throughout my childhood, I found myself painting and learning
academical drawing during my studies in architecture. With mandatory
“art tasks” behind me, I was happy to pick up a brush and start
working more on pieces not linked to my studies.
I took part in several student art competitions, and later exhibited my
work in Swansea, Moscow, Belgrade and Tbilisi.
Recent nomadic lifestyle has helped me develop ties with several art
communities and spread my work around the globe. My art pieces are in
private collections located in the UK, Germany, Spain, Georgia, Serbia,
Israel, Russia and Turkey.
The desire I feel to create art is simply fueled by beauty, that I am
often lucky to find. Presence of art has been one of very few constants
for me in the last couple of years- that is another reasons I hold on to
it so dearly.
The spontaneous type of art that life drawing provides is very
intriguing to me. Now that academical drawing is in the past, and I have
shed a more dry approach that comes with it, I try to find the most
interesting elements of the composition in the poses shown by models.
Often I see life drawing as a sort of dialogue, where I am told a scene,
a mood, a line, and I respond, or vice versa.
I build the structure of bodyscapes quickly, leaving less important
details untold or behind the frame. One of my goals is to try create a
piece that feels complete, but simple, rather than just overdrawn. Doing
so in constricted time frame is a challenge. And to overcome it I use
colours heavily and a broad palette. They are used to show volume,
emphasize gestures and set the mood I want to convey. Soft pastels are
ideal for that- it is a very pleasing tool to work with: from its
ability to easily blend and provide colours to the tactile sense of how
it feels on paper.
For my paintings I go through a more thorough process, as I go back and
forth between several sketches and ideas within a particular concept.
While this type of work is more meticulous than life drawing, all my
paintings are driven by emotions first and foremost. Currently I am
interested in the dances and fights between figures and their shadows,
while colours manipulate the scene. I use a less subtle technique of
subtracting shapes from the main composition to direct the attention to
a particular motion, detail or lack of it. While there might be some
riddles hidden on the canvas, I don`t like to think that there is a
particular message or «deep meaning» I try to force upon the viewer.
Instead retelling the feeling is the main theme’.