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Painting is playing on a color-violin, seventy-times-seven stringed, and inventing your tune as you play it! Definitely all the technical and media questions shall have their place … but the primary question of all is – can you play?
John Ruskin
Since I began to feel what color means, I understand that I can do what I like with my colors no matter how realistic it goes. Or let’s say no matter how unrealistic it goes. Who ever really cared about realism only? We always look for something more than just realism. And what is pure realism? We look for mystery and allegory in every piece of realism, as well as we do in our lives. Life is terribly realistic but we always look for more and we distort our reality in the process.
As for allegory, I have never been a great fan of it myself. I know it sounds ironic when you look at my paintings but I prefer the word applicability. You are free to find an allegory if you wish so. I give you absolute freedom to understand my art in personal confidential way. I only want people to see my art through the prism of their own lives. When I am doing my job by creating a picture I envision an ideal interaction between an artist and a viewer, when an art piece forces the viewer to look inside and find personal connections. It takes huge effort from both an artist and a viewer to accomplish this.
People keep asking me about who had most influence on my art. I have always found myself lost in this devastating question, because everyone and everything had influenced me and my art in some way. Every single day has added its portion of poison and potion to my art. Many artists and non-artists influenced my artistic outlook. Every single word, kind or not so, has changed me. I am not really able to mention anyone or anything influential in my life without missing someone or something else.
The most important thing for me was always feedback either positive or negative. My art is a result of my love and my understanding is that feedback is a result of vital functions of my art since feedback is an evidence of existence, presence and growth. This is very important for an artist. Of course this is hard to understand when you are a teenager for example. I still remember grins of my art studio classmates when I was showing my works made in colorful figurative style. Everyone was so “classical”! I was only a teenager and those grins were painful. But things have changed since then. I am not a sensitive teenager anymore and I still want feedback to analyze my own work.
I always had a specific sense of color. Fascination with Color was the only reason why I started to paint. Passion for Color pushed me out of my career as a nuclear physicist toward the uncertain path of a freelance artist. Infatuation with Color made me forget everything I have been taught in art studio and do everything differently. I can’t explain the nature of my relationships with colors. I just know that colors can make me excited, happy, sad or even physically sick without any other reason but the color itself.
Here is a glimpse of the overall sequence and the structure of my usual work process. I begin a new piece by making classical realistic sketches. Then I feel that I am not honest enough, I feel unsatisfied and even disappointed. Starting from this point I continue my work by literally “thinking” on canvases. I put thick mono-color layers of paint to create a comfortable environment for myself. Then I shape a character in this new colorful welcoming reality, concentrating on some details and neglecting others. Sometimes I make my paintings deliberately flat, sometimes I shape it roughly with paints and dabs like if it is made of wet compliant clay. Somehow an art-germ uses the soil of my imagination and life experience. As a result I end up with my plot expressed in dominating colors.
It is hard to avoid confusion between personal matters and the miraculous machinery of the Art in any statement, but at least I tried my best as I always do in my art.
Anna Seven
Biography
Anna Seven is an American artist living and working in San Francisco.
From the very beginning of her life Anna Seven was exposed to wide variety of artwork at her parents’ house, at homes of her friends and at the great museums and galleries. She began relatively serious painting and drawing in the third grade. Since then she is studying and learning how to draw and paint by using her passion and dedication to the art.
In age of 18 Anna Seven left her home country for three years and learned how to use traditional pen and ink art professionally. She also worked with watercolors, oil paints and colored pencils. She graduated from YSU in 1995 with a MS in Electrodynamics and Theory of Electromagnetic Field.
Anna Seven traveled extensively through many countries during her life. She lived in many cities and she loved many great places in this world. But there is only one place which she is in love with. One cannot live in San Francisco if one is not in love with it.
Anna Seven paints intensively with oil and acrylics on canvas in a style best described as an Aggressive Idiocy in Figurative Expressionism. Her artwork can be found in private collections in several countries: Argentina, Armenia, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Israel, and USA.
Anna Seven can be reached at her art studio in San Francisco: (415) 336-3575 or on her website at www.AnnaSeven.com
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