INTIMISTS 9
"WONDERFUL WORLD"
12 October - 11 November 2021
Discover Artists:
Mercedes Ng
Nadzeya Naurotskaya
Maria Titan
Uljana Korol
Lola Muñoz
Elena Sholokhova
MARIA TITAN, SOUTH AFRICA/CYPRUS
Maria was born and raised in South Africa to Greek Cypriot parents. She knew she wanted to be an artist when she was seven years old. After completing her BA in Fine Art from the University of South Africa, she moved to Taiwan where she taught English and Art. Four years later, she moved to Cyprus where she currently resides in Nicosia, the last divided city in Europe. She owned a recruitment company for several years and continued to paint as a hobby. During Covid, with offices shut, she found her old paintbrushes and started painting again. One thing led to another, and she decided to leave the corporate world for good, choosing to rent a studio where she now paints full time and feels the most alive she has ever felt. She has had several of her artworks published in art publications and sells paintings both locally and internationally. She is currently working towards a solo exhibition.
Maria is inspired by people, nature, still life, and interiors. She chooses saturated colours and bold expressive brushstrokes. Her work often tells a story and feels quite whimsical, superimposing animals in interior spaces or humans in front of ornate, detailed backgrounds. A mixed-media artist, she loves to paint on watercolour paper, favouring it above all other mediums, and primarily in acrylics, pastel, pen and watercolour.
MERCEDES NG, HONG KONG/USA
Born and raised in Hong Kong, Mercedes is an artist and painter currently based in Utah, United States. Her fascination with cityscapes and buildings is drawn from her hometown and her childhood. She received her BA degree in Art from Brigham Young University in 2020 and has since been making works, primarily oil painting. She received multiple awards and has exhibited her work throughout the United States and internationally. She was a recipient of the New Beehive grant awarded by the State of Utah as well as the, “I AM” initiative grant in 2021. Her works have been exhibited in the following locations: the Provo Studio, Provo, UT; BF Larsen Gallery, Provo, UT; and Santa Fe Community College, Santa Fe, NM. They have also been published in the, “35x35 Project'' by the Copelouzos Family Art Museum in Greece. Her current body of work is a response to the political climate in her homeland and an effort to recollect memories of places that have played a monumental part in her own history.
NADZEYA NAUROTSKAYA, BELARUS/ITALY
Nadzeya Naurotskaya was born in Belarus and since 2017 lives in Pisa (Italy).
It was art therapy that led to painting and photography. Studied drawing at Accademia d’arte di Pisa
(Professor Bruno Pollacci's class). Traditional paintings on canvas and graphic drawings were soon
supplemented by work on stained glass.
Her paintings are like entrances to parallel worlds. They are for those who knows: the world is not enough.
There are other spaces where we live right now. Where we live a different life. And we can transfer
between these worlds. What for? To have other experience of ourselves, to open the mind, to expand the
consciousness.
Everything starts from acrylic one day, then - oil, a bit later comes to oil canvases with built-in glass. Vital
brushstroke and bold colors create memorable images. They seem to be both familiar and unexplored, vivid
and intimate, something that you easily identify but it remains mysterious.
Nadezhda's double-sided paintings embody the concept of dual reality in it's best way. Even if it's hard for
one to imagine something behind this materialistic world - just take a look at these small pieces of stained
glass. It's enough, you are already there. Just turn a picture to the other side and you are in a rabbit-hole.
Everything is possible there, everything is allowed.
It's an incredible and unforgettable experience. Mostly because of the author's background - Nadezhda is
an art therapist with more than 20 year practice. She knows how to see more in everybody and everything.
Her paintings are invitations to find out - who we are?
ULYANA KOROL, UKRAINE/SPAIN
Ulyana Korol is an acclaimed painter from Ukraine based in Spain, whose works have
been featured in solo and group exhibitions internationally. She works in the technique of
palette knife oil painting.
Ulyana draws her artistic inspiration from travelling. Her canvases emit a warm light and
highlight the beauty of nature.
The main idea of her art is to transfer the emotion of happiness and also love to the nature.
Ulyana Korol was born in 1980 in Lviv, Ukraine. She comes from a family of doctors. From early
childhood, she showed creative skills, so parents encouraged this in every possible way. There were different
painting studios, her own seeking and graduation with honors the art school. The desire to create has
reflected in Ulyana's first personal exhibition at the age of nine.
She graduated from the Lviv National University, the Faculty of International Relations, and later - the
Law Faculty.
Living in the city rich on cultural and artistic events, Ulyana visits various art exhibitions and events,
communicates with artists, draws new knowledge and inspiration. Art has never been ceasing to be a part of
her life. She continued to draw at every opportunity. However, after having become a mother of three sons,
there was less time for painting.
Later, as the children have grown up, Ulyana often asked herself, "Why don't I increase the talent
given to me from above?"
Eventually, as if an invisible hand drove her back to the dream – Ulyana has bought canvases, oil
paints and begun to paint with greater passion. It has happened in the summer of 2014
Since then, the artist has been working a lot in the creative field.
Artist’s works are held in the numerous private collections in the U.S., Europe, Australia, New
Zealand, Brazil and Asia.
LOLA MUNOZ, SPAIN/MEXICO
Lola Muñoz was born in the Mediterranean city of Valencia, Spain, in 1983, a multidisciplinary artist and teacher of Art, after living the last eight years in Mexico, where she formed a beautiful family, with which she resumed her artistic and teaching career, she returned to Spain four years ago fascinated by nature, Mexican culture and its beautiful crafts, her work focuses on the search for innate qualities of the human soul: beauty, calm, femininity, compassion , peace and inner wisdom, all represented through the nature and her cycles, metamorphosis, astronomy, sacred geometries and all the flowers and animals around her. She makes collage drawn and painted in oilpaint along with work with engraving techniques, linographs and mixed techniques, seeking healing in each work, always open to inner knowledge and the freedom that artistic creation brings her.
ELENA SHOLOKHOVA, RUSSIA
Elena Sholokhova, 1974, lives and works in Moscow.
In her works, she turns to feminist art and the interpretation of the legacy of the Russian artist Mikhail Vrubel through the prism of female painting of the New York School - action painting / abstract expressionism. The artist focuses on Vrubel's trilogy, The Seated Demon, The Flying Demon and The Demon Defeated, rewriting this image of the Spirit, combining masculine and feminine in an expressive manner, inspired by the art of Joan Mitchell.
Despite the difference in the time of life and work of Vrubel and Mitchell, the artist combines them on her canvases, as a poetic device, where the development of human consciousness, as a sequence of changing several inner "I", each of which corresponds to a special inner landscape.
The artist develops the direction of abstract expressionism in Russia.