Andreana Dobreva

My work draws from the visual overload of our reality, sometimes quite unfiltered and without judgment. My language is that of Baroque and Classical painting, shaped by my childhood surrounded by reproductions and my long-standing love of museums. It all probably started with my fascination with the Italian Renaissance and Baroque – and for decades I have been visiting museums and engaging visually with masterpieces. I study composition, dramaturgy, the use of light, the meaning of shadows and the many nuances in between. I also share the joy of painting skin and the human body and can identify with artists who clearly preferred skin to drapery, and I don’t understand why some choose the folds of fabric instead. For a long time I avoided looking at still lifes. I thought I wouldn’t be interested in them or I believed they were just beautiful – all those flowers and butterflies. That perception changed when I saw the still lifes of Jan Winnix in the Wallace collection. Those paintings captivated me and I am still influenced by them. Winnix is ​​somehow different – ​​his work seems free to me, unencumbered by the obligation to depict fruits or vegetables, wealth or a successful hunt. His sense of drama and physicality is closer to what I am trying to capture, especially in his relationship to light.

Andreana Dobreva

There is never a dull moment. I think of these sacrificial animals – they are not just meat. The moment of exhalation, the moment between life and death, is captured. I also like to play with the drama permeated by human skin – sensual pumpkins, grapes and fruits that lose all innocence and become part of the body. Contemporary exhibitions, the internet, practically all forms of visual consumption – sometimes quite crude – also find their place in my working process. Baroque composition is simply the language in which I feel most free, but the visual world is rich and haunting; symbolic connections are blurred and I like to let the subconscious mix things up. Then I seek the moment of liberation – not a calm, given freedom, but an intense, almost dramatic experience of liberation. The dense impasto and splashes of color are more difficult to control than anything I have just mentioned. But to create that moment I rely on structure: the laws of composition and form – my adherence to language – something essential that I can resist. I try to capture the feeling of liberation, of rebellion against the familiar.