Alevtina Golovin

Drawn to art early, Alevtina discovered her passion while attending school in England. Interested in other subjects as well, she started studying architecture only to learn that such an overly-practical and artistically restrictive occupation is not for her. Following her return to St. Petersburg, Alevtina started to paint while her motivation to explore art to the fullest strengthened through positive feedback and encouragement. Embedded in her work, Alevtina’s personal emotional life serves as one of the greatest foundations upon which she builds her oeuvre. Hiding different glimpses of beauty, freedom, love, or pain within the layers of the paint she uses, this emerging artist continues to create particularly moving portraits of archetypal or invented characters.

Alevtina Golovina’s works are created in an immersive, meditative work process, through which the artist allows her subconscious to lead. Using pastels and oils, she applies them to the canvas using a palette knife for thicker layers or extremely diluted paint for the dripping effect. Sensing the urge to physically connect with the image she is creating, the artist uses her fingers to smudge colour and blend layers together. Completely visceral, her work is rarely developed from a sketch, and the colour palette is also developed through the act of painting. Despite the lack of professional artistic training, Alevtina’s touch reveals a particular, unique harmony between texture and colour.

In terms of subject, paintings Alevtina Golovina could be characterised as portraits. However, her portraiture is hardly literal. Describing her works as “visions and mirrors of beauty [she] sees in human anatomy”, the artist implies that these images are in fact her inventions, or rather interpretations of the finest aspects of human beauty, originating from many different places. Each one of these portraits exhibits a strong presence, communicated through the eyes, the visual and conceptual peak of her portraiture. Multilayered background into which the artist blends scarce anatomical parts is there only to support the facial aspect, while the actual, depicted anatomy is stylised, abstract and inconsequential.