Lana Svirezheva

Deciding to be an artist at the age of four, while looking up at Sodoma's St. Sebastian in the Uffizzi, I have since pursued this path by experimenting widely to figure out what kind of art practice I want to embody. 

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Informed by my classical training at the Florence Academy of Art and my Masters by Research in Interdisciplinary Creative Practices, it is always important to me to combine both strong craft and concept: Each painting or drawing of mine is carefully planned in terms of its materiality: When painting I use lightfast pigments on reliable surfaces, and in my digital drawings I work with trusted printers to produce vibrant, archival giclée prints. Further, the rigorous practice of drawing as a craft and a science lies at the center of my work, which is why I also teach both private lessons and workshops.

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In terms of concepts that inform my art, working from memory has become an important method in my practice. With far from photographic recollections, I draw my way toward figures I once encountered—a homeless woman massaging her foot, a boy’s double chin and toothy grin, a whippet’s slender head slipping out of its collar. These images often balance the socially critical with the whimsical in the tradition of the tragicomoedia, or the groteque: the comic, after all, can make the tragic easier to face.

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A new vein in my work is that I am developing a form of illustration, rooted in a fine-art sensibility, as an outlet for my love of whimsy, animals, and storytelling. I want to use this rich medium to engage with a wider public, create an immersive aesthetic world, and speak to the deeply human need for stories as a source of meaning in life.