1111 74808 02306 11 - Selby Fleetwood Gallery

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74808 02306
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Centered compositions with breathing space,
rendered with delicate, tonally sensitive brushwork,
lend quiet grace to Olga Antonova's still lifes.
BY JOHN A. PARKS
THE STILL LIFE PAINTINGS of Olga
A.ntonova feature objects that have been loved,
tended and cherished. Antique porcelain and
china are painted with thoughtful delicacy to
pr.oject a wistful, quiet and meditative atmosphere. The artist favors centrally focused compositions, and often a single object sits on a
tabletop, placed close to the middle of the canvas. Antonova generally avoids perfect symme-:
try by positioning perhaps a handle or a spout
to one side, but the centrality of the composition reinforces a sense of settled stillness.
symmetry and Space·
Even when the artist chooses to paint .a group
of objects, the compositions tend to be close to
symmetrical. "I don't think much about symmetry," says the artist, "it's just something that
comes up. I do admire single-object painting
in the work of other artists. There's a Francisco
de Zurbaran painting of a cup with a little
flower in it, for instance, and some ofJeanSimeon Chardin's paintings. Such compositions can be monumental."
Antonova is also thoughtful about the
relationship between the size of the objects
in her paintings and the space around them.
"Sometimes I play with emptiness and fullness
in the same piece," she says (see Four Teacups
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Hanging, page 32). Indeed, even though the
objects she paints are fully painted and entirely
present, they're generally surrounded by a
considerable amount of still and vacant air.
"Loneliness," remarks the artist, "is part of our
lives."
Fine-Tuned strokes and Edges
Antonova's rendering technique is richly
descriptive. She touches the brush to canvas
delicately"and expl0res va;:Jatio9s'vvithin areas,
brushstroke by brushstroke, creatihg a slightly
broken feel to the surface, a soft shimmer that
envelopes the~ntire image.
She works the edges, bringing about variations of softness and hardness that help further
the sense of air and depth. "Edges are important players in a painting," says Antonova.
"They were important to the old masters; their
handling of edges was sublime." When it
comes to deciding which edges will be soft
and which will be hard, the artist says that the
choices are intuitive. There are no rules.
OPPOSITE: The
reflection on the
vessel in Gold
water Pitcher
(oil on canvas,
23%X21%) bears
Antonova's selfportrait, a figure as
alone in the studio
as the pitcher is in
the painting.
Whispers of Reality
Then there's the decision about the level of finish in a work, whether elements will be stated
more or less fully. Antonova chooses to deliver
a full description of form and light but leaves
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BELOW: Using a
large 4x2-foot format, Antonova emphasized the teapot's
verticality in Teapot
With Red Stamp
(oil on canvas).
the viewer with a sense of understatement, of
things left unsaid or softly whispered. Generally,
she underplays the contrast in her pictures and
harmonizes the color quietly, giving a kind of
dusty, timeless feel to the works, as though she
has been looking at her subject for a very long
time. The light seems to move slowly through
the paintings, inviting the viewer to slow down
and relish the act oflooking and considering
the world just as the artist has done.
Penchant for Porcelain
Although Antonova's world is one of quiet
domestic contemplation, it actually reaches
across the globe. Having grown up in Russia,
Antonova studied painting at what is now
called the I. Repin St. Petersburg State
Academy Institute of Painting, Sculpture and
Architecture, where she completed a six-year
course patterned along the lines of old master
training. "There wasn't any avant-garde work
there,'' she says. Later she immigrated to the
United States and then lived for 15 years in
France, where she became interested in porcelain and china. "The French love their china
and keep it on display in their homes,'' she says,
"It's not just showing off; it's simply that they
love it. They're proud of the different schools of
French porcelain. It's something you don't see
in the United States."
Many of the pieces that appear in
Antonova's paintings are antique. "They don't
have to be antique for me to paint them,'' she
says, "but somehow pieces do get more rich
Antonova's Influences
Given the quietness of Antonova's paintings,
it's hardly surprising to learn that she admires
the work of Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) as
well as that of the Jean-Simeon Chardin (16991779). Both these masters devoted themselves
to still life painting, finding worlds of extraordinary richness and depth in the contemplation
and depiction of common objects.
Antonova also enjoys the work of Giovanni
Battista Moroni (1520-1578), who created
religious scenes and portraits with an unusual
painterly command. understandably, Antonova
is an admirer of Willem Claeszoon Heda (15941680), one of the consummate still life painters
of the golden age of Dutch painting. His work is
both exquisite and dense as well as brilliantly
organized.
Of the 20th-/21st-century artists, she enjoys
the work of still life painter Cristof Yvore
(1967-2013).
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with time." Naturally the artist is always on
the lookout for subject matter and has collected
a large number of objects over the years. "My
house looks like an antique store,'' she jokes.
"It's fun at first, but then you run out of storage
areas and it's less fun."
Process Influenced by Intuition
Antonova's first task on starting a new painting is to select her subject matter. "I select
objects for their visual impact on me,'' she
says. "No personal meaning really, just what
arrests my eyes."
Having chosen a subject and set up her
still life, Antonova does no preliminary studies
but rather begins work by drawing in charcoal
directly onto the canvas. At this stage she's
sorting out the composition or, as she puts it,
"finding a place for the objects on the canvas."
Having organized things to her satisfaction, she
then moves into paint. If she intends to glaze
later, she usually begins with a rough blackand-white underpainting (grisaille); sometimes
she foregoes the underpainting altogether.
Antonova
has depicted the
dragonfly vase seen
in Art Nouveau
ABOVE:
vase With Blue
Flowers (oil on
canvas, 19%x19%)
many times, but
she "plays" with the
design on the china
(see Art Nouveau
vase With Dragonflies on the cover).
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29
of the outer part of the cup and then stepping
the color along the inside of the cup through
perhaps a dozen changes from left to right.
Similarly, the gold band of the decoration
undergoes many changes in order to achieve
the effect of illumination. The filigree decoration, drawn somewhat unevenly, adds considerable charm and personality to the work. The
subtly worked color in the background shifts
from a warm beige at the top to a slightly
cooler light at the base. On the right side, the
edges of the cup almost melt away into the
background.
This strategy of combining somewhat flexible drawing with a painterly touch along with
exacting observation of tone and color is pursued in all Antonova's paintings. In Two Cups
on Blue Stripes (below), for example, the artist
Materials
surfaces: cotton
duck or linen
canvas
Olis: any
high-quality
brand; prefers
Williamsburg
Mediums: Utrecht
Oil Painting Medium
or a mixture of varnish, linseed oil and
turpentine in equal
parts
Brushes: Utrecht
bristle flats of
various sizes
Palette: Blick
large paper palettes
ABOVE: Cup With
Pink Filigree (oil
on canvas, 9x12),
with its simulation
of the cup's multiple
curved facets, displays Antonova's
mastery of tonal and
value nuances as
well as of lost and
found edges.
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Antonova always works directly from life
(noting that there's not enough information in
a photograph) and always with natural light,
favoring north light, which her studio provides.
She uses bristle flats and mixes her paint
on large sheets of palette paper without elaborate premixing. Again she invokes the word
"intuitive" to describe her approach. The palette
papers fill up quickly, and she often discards
several of them in the course of a painting.
When beginning a piece, she tries to get
a rough suggestion of all the elements fairly
quickly. "I want to see how the play of tones
and values will fall," she says. Getting an
early indication of the range of values across
the whole surface allows her to judge them
more accurately as she builds the succeeding
layers of paint. Her brushwork is somewhat
delicate, and she adds a little medium to the
paint to thin it so the paint will brush out
easily. Sometimes she buys a commercial mix
and sometimes she mixes her own medium
from varnish, linseed oil and turpentine. The
medium also aids in speeding the drying time
and adding a little more transparency to the
paint layers. She says she has little trouble
knowing when a painting is finished: "I
don't really have a formula . It's just a visual
sensation."
cupfuls of Subtleties
The results of Antonova's process can be disarming in their subtlety. Cup with Pink Filigree
(above) is a seemingly simple painting, a single
cup standing on a table. The light comes from
the left so that the inside of the cup takes the
light on the right, where a highlight, from
amid a group of close tones, dazzles the viewer.
The cup handle is half in shadow, and the body
of the cup casts another shadow onto the table.
It's worth noting how personal the drawing and the touch of the paint are. The cup is
drawn well enough, but not perfectly. There's
a little "give" in the line, and the ellipses aren't
quite exact. Somehow these inaccuracies cause
the viewer's eye to relax. On the other hand,
Antonova tracks the tone and color changes
across the surface of the cup with an eagle
eye. One can see the artist taking the color
through many changes with each curved facet
LEFT: In TWO Cups
on Blue Stripes
(oil on canvas, 11x9),
Antonova adeptly
handles the complex
reflections of stripes
on the curved,
metallic surfaces of
the cups.
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BELOW: Four
Teacups Hanging
(oil on canvas,
25x25), a relatively
complex piece,
conveys both "emptiness and fullness."
Modulated colors
help lend a sense of
quiet harmony.
presents two stacked silver cups reflecting the
stripes of the tablecloth beneath them. Once
again, the drawing is accurate enough but not
exactingly perfect. The paint, applied freshly,
seems to breathe. Here the artist has created
an added drama in the dialogue between the
stripes on the tablecloth and their reflection in
the cups. The silver surfaces distort and "speed
up" the space around them. They also shift the
color so that the light blue stripes of the tablecloth become an improbably strong, dark blue
in the cups. A little magic has taken place.
Antonova presents a greater range in Four
Teacups Hanging (below), in which an array
of cups and bowls appears clustered around
a teacup tree. Here the color changes shown
on the inside surfaces of the hanging cups
are particularly interesting. The artist shifted
through a variety of warm and cool grays, turquoises, beiges and violets in order to achieve
considerable luminosity in the shadows. Note,
too, the exquisite range of blues in the assembled cups and bowls beneath the hanging cups.
The richness and harmonious nature of
such color is only achieved by considered,
patient looking and painting over many hours,
a labor fueled by a love of the art of painting and a delight in simply seeing. "Working
with still life offers some kind of undisturbed
meditation on what you see in front of you,''
says Anto nova. "Of course I'd like the viewers
to be touched, as I was, by seeing something.
I think I can make something special and
meditative from something not so special."
is an artist as well as a writer. His latest
book is Universal Principles of Art: 100 Key Concepts for
Understanding Analyzing and Practicing Art. Visit his
website at johnaparks.com.
JOHN A. PARKS
Four
White and Gold
Teacups (oil on
ca nvas, 16x24),
Antonova avoids a
too-perfect symmetry with irregularities
in the cups' shapes
and the turned
handle of the lower
middle cup.
ABOVE: In
Olga Antonova was born in Volgograd, Russia, and grew up in
Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). In 1980 she received a master's
degree in fine art from what is now called the I. Repin St. Petersburg
State Academy Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.
She subsequently immigrated to the United States and then lived
for more than 15 years in France. Antonova has exhibited widely in
the United States and abroad (France, Germany and Puerto Rico).
Gallery Henoch (New York City), Selby Fleetwood Gallery (Santa
Fe, N.M.), Gardner Colby Gallery (Naples, Fla.) and Beth Urdang
Gallery (Wellesley, Mass.) represent her work. Visit her website at
olgaantonova.com.
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