"Spread your wings"

An exhibition of interior paintings under this title is held
at the JINR Cultural Centre "Mir".

The artist Alina Khvastunova was born in sunny Adygea and since childhood she has loved nature and hiking in the mountains. Alina studied drawing at the art school. She graduated from Lomonosov Moscow State University, Faculty of Physics.

After immersing herself in science, she defended her doctoral thesis on the topic "The use of a cellular biochip in the diagnosis of leukaemia" at the Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University and only in 2020, she remembered that she had always loved to draw, to create beauty, to show emotion and impression on a canvas.

After a long "scientific break", Alina took up creative work again. She took an online course at the Modern Painting School and learned the technique of gilding with gilt that allows one to transform any painting and fill it with a noble metallic luster. She studied the technique of volumetric painting, where texture paste can be used to form a relief on the picture.

Painting helps to show our feelings and the process of creating paintings fills us with energy. That is why Alina has organized art workshops in Dubna to share her experience. Everyone can take part in an art-meeting and create their own interior painting in a couple of hours, meet creative people and have an interesting time. We talked to the artist about all this during the first days of the exhibition.

Exhibition curator E.Troyan, artist A.Khvastunova, director of the JINR Cultural Centre "Mir" E.Yamaleeva

Alina, let's reason for a while. Tell me, please, did you choose painting or did it choose you?

- Since school years, I have had a notebook with a square in it that I have carried with me everywhere and have made pencil sketches in it. I've always had many hobbies: mountaineering, science, hiking, creating and I didn't think that painting would one day become my favourite hobby. The very process of mixing colours, putting paint on canvas harmonizes and gives joy. When I was on maternity leave, I returned to painting and realized that it gave me a lot of encouragement.

Is an artist's education a necessity? What can you learn and what can't you learn?

- Of course, basic knowledge is important in painting. I got it at art school and today, I learn and improve in the area in which I am interested. Everyone can master basic techniques, yet everyone puts vision of the world on canvas in his or her own way. The deeper a person's inner world is, the more interesting his or her paintings are.

Can art education restrict freedom and put the person into a framework that has not existed before?

- Education is an important stage of development on which the artist manifests himself. Freedom is within the person. In my opinion, in his creative and spiritual development he should remove the limits and expand the boundaries of his vision of the world.

Your paintings are very airy, full of lightness, tenderness, transparency. Is it a quality of your character or a response to the perception of the world?

- I love life, I'm open to people. I believe that joy is a particular wisdom of a person. I think, it is shown in my paintings. Each picture is a captured emotion, a mood, a response to the movement of the soul.

How did you get your style and how would you describe it?

- I have always loved Impressionist paintings. I paint my paintings in the same breath, in the same mood, about what I am feeling at the moment. I like to use bright colours, gilding with gilt, contrasting colours combined with dimensional elements.

Are custom-made art works and those created under the impression or inspiration different in mood?

-I think, the main thing is to match the mood and view of the world of the customer and the artist. Recently, I have heard the phrase "love the art within you". Art is an opportunity to interact with oneself, a way of feeling and it's important to understand it. And if to have such an approach towards painting, it will be a pleasure. And when we paint to maintain our ego and self-esteem, that's another art. We create it to get attention.

What do you think people, even those far from art, can learn from artists?

- I love watching people that are far from painting pick up a brush and paints and overcome the fear of the white canvas. It's nice that girls come to art events more than once. And if the first time they are afraid that they won't make it, the second time, they have much more confidence. And later, they create their own original paintings. In this way, one learns to overcome the fear of the unknown and to let the new into his or her life.

Does the atmosphere in Dubna dispose you to be creative, to improve your talents?

- When I moved to Dubna, I thought that here there was only an atmosphere of science, people were physicists. But it turned out that this city has a great cultural tradition. I was impressed by the paintings of Boris Makarov in the streets of the city, the embankment of the river Volga, the monuments to scientists. I admired the paintings of Vlad Kravchuk, whose exhibitions I saw at the JINR Cultural Centre "Mir". Today, it's me waiting for everyone to visit my exhibition at your hospitable Centre during the whole June and till 2 July. The JINR Cultural Centre "Mir" is another story of visits of poets, musicians and actors to Dubna. And I fell in love with this city in which I found many like-minded people. But at the same time, the right atmosphere is within each of us. Therefore, no matter how a person moves in space and time, his inner world is always with him.

Eleonora YAMALEEVA, member of the Union of Theatre Workers of the Russian Federation,
Photo by Natalya ABDULLAEVA