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Kirkenes Plain-Air

THE PAINTING & DRAWING SOCIETY:
Olga Florenskaya, St Petersburg
Irina Zatulovskaya, Moscow
Alexander Dashevsky, St Petersburg
Alexander Florensky, St Petersburg

Selected paintings from the plain-air and exhibition in Kirkenes, July 2008.

The Painting and Drawing Society was founded by Petersburg artists Ivan Sotnikov and Alexander Florensky during a joint trip to the Solovetskie Islands. The society is the initiative of artists many of whom are familiar to the general public from well-known art groups such as the ”Mitki” and “Novye Khudozhniki” (the “New Artists”).

The Painting and Drawing Society sets out to revive traditional artistic values during the age of postmodernism. A more specific aim is the propagation of skills which have entirely disappeared from the arsenal of modern art, such as painting and drawing from nature.

The Painting and Drawing Society has conducted plain-air painting seminars in a variety of locations. The most important of these have been at Ferapontovo, Norilsk, Tsarskoe Selo, Nizhny Novgorod, and Krasnoyarsk in Russia; Khersones in the Ukraine; and Tbilisi in Georgia.

The Kirkenes Plain-Air painting trip took place from June 26th to July 12th as part of BAR International, an artist’s residency programme run by the Pikene på Broen.

The participants in the project were artists from St Petersburg and Moscow – Alexander Dashevsky, Irina Zatulovskaya, Olga Florenskaya and Alexander Florensky. The artists lived and worked in Kirkenes, but also made frequent excursions to places on the outskirts of the town and in Finnmark County. They painted open-air paintings at the Bjørnevatn mines, on the Arctic coast at Grense Jakobselv, in the fishing village of Bugøynes, and on the River Neiden, and in the evenings did “homework” based on impressions they had gathered in the open air. The artists set off on a sea voyage on the ferry Hurtigruten to the town of Vardø and visited the village of Hamningberg.

The Kirkenes Plain-Air painting trip ended with a conclusory exhibition at the Borderland Museum.

A. Florensky

A. Dashevsky

I. Zatulovskaya

O. Florenskaya

Oslo

Murmansk

Rovaniemi