Maiden in purple robe

Kira (Gero) Alekseeva, Ukraine

I paint pictures with Faber-Castell pencils in the style of symbolic realism. Aesthetic ideas of the Middle Ages were formed by religious consciousness. Every object of the sensual world had in the world of the spiritual, high world its ideal prototype - the creative thought of God. Every phenomenon of the earthly world was a reflection of the Divine prototype. It was considered impossible to fully cognize and accurately reflect this prototype in a work of art, but the master had to strive to come as close to it as possible. In the Divine design of each object lies one idea and it is unchangeable. The main goal of art becomes the desire to convey the inner, outwardly invisible world of things. Each artistic image with all its concreteness is perceived as a multivalent symbol, the artist has the task to depict the unimaginable, to recreate the image of the transcendent world with the help of the language of forms, colors and lines accessible to the human eye. Therefore, the medieval art of Byzantium and the West developed a new, conventional artistic style, saturated with symbolism, seeking to detach itself from the usual sensual visual forms and life associations.