Marina Lukianova
- Jun 19
- 2 min read
Marina Lukianova is a figurative painter who has exhibited in Europe. Recent exhibitions include
ARTdeSUISSE International Art Fair in Luzern as well as in Basel, Switzerland, ITSLIQUID Group International Art Fair in Venezia, RossArt Gallery in Zurich. She has a background as an architect and describes her art as a “celebration and joyful interaction among people. I believe festivities inject a spring of improvisation and irrationality into our rational lives that we really need. My big inspiration is retro photography, working with which I try to connect the past and present, allowing us to peek into something forgotten yet precious in human relationship”.
With a sense of jubilee and recreation, a typical theme Marina Lukianova conveys would be figures frolicking on the beach. Based on vintage photography, she portrays dated characters with their 60s and 70s haircuts and outfits roughhouse on the beach, play volleyball, or pose nude amongst a landscape. These acrylic paintings often have the appearance of being similar to watercolor due to their low saturation and bleeding pigments as well as transparent washes. She often overlays her figures with neon and bright colors, as if Marina were ‘bleaching’ her subjects with imaginative colors. Such an execution of process often leaves the impression as if the paintings were a poster, especially with their heightened sense of linearity and pop art inclinations.
Nostalgia would be an overarching method of expression in the paintings as the figures are often joyous or doll-like, conveying a more innocent, playful era of time. The figures engage in sports-like activity or pose amongst a wash of colors to be admired as if they appeared out of a photograph from LIFE magazine. As a result, her works have a documentative approach to image-making which reflect a great sense of celebration in an age devoid of the menacing attributes of the digital and globalized age.
Happy Running Youth (pictured above) contains a vintage scene awash with bright dyed-like colors washing the figures as they dance on the beach. The hues are an expression of the jubilee amongst the crowd, especially the peachy red displayed. Such a painting with the composition, colors, and retro imagery may be reminiscent of the film Dirty Dancing. One of the figures even sort of resembles Patrick Swayze from the film with the same body build. With their dancing and vintage haircuts as well as bathing suits, Marina expresses the 1960s with a grand sense of festivities.
Marina Lukianova is an expressive painter who brings value to vintage imagery through a sense of playfulness and optimism. She digs deep into the purpose of recreation and uses a clever mix of painted washes and neon colors to express a heightened sense of celebration. Marina descends upon her composition with an objective of lifting up her audience through retro nostalgia, sportsmanship, as well as aesthetic beauty of the figure in pose amidst brightly-dyed landscapes. With a sense of vigor and rejuvenation, Marina Lukianova breathes life into fleeting memories of an age of innocence.
