Irina Simidchieva – IRA - Art Magazine - Art Market Magazine for Contemporary Fine Art.

PAINTING WITH METAPHOR

Irina Simidchieva
© All rights reserved.
Unconscious dance. 2020. Oil on Canvas.
65 X 100 cm.

Ira Simidchieva is a professional, independent NYC-based artist, originally from Europe. Irina exhibited her work around the globe in many solo exhibitions, and has been part of numerous group shows in Europe and the USA; Her work has been published in international magazines and art books.
Simidchieva’s art is in private collections, including at Keshan gallery and Nikolay Rainov Foundation.

In Ira Simidchieva’s artworks, she focuses on contemporary abstract figurative art and abstraction. Previously, she had a strong interest in the landscape. She has experience working with and exhibiting in different materials like printmaking and sculpture, but her preferred media and materials are oil paints on canvas.
She utilizes an eclectic, contemporary approach to create colorful artworks that are unique editions; she does not use prints nor multiplies her work. Most of her works are on solid wooden frames with pure linen stretched firmly above and primed with classically handmade prime. The images she paints have no analog in reality, and everything in the painting: color, structure, composition, is sourced in her imagination.

Irina Simidchieva
© All rights reserved.
Embodiment of a dream. 2019. Oil on Canvas.
60 x 80 cm.

“I am a NYC-based professional and independent exhibiting artist and psychoanalyst.
In my artwork, I focus on contemporary abstract figurative art and abstraction, but I also have a strong interest in the landscape.
My preferred media and materials are oil paints on canvas. I utilize an eclectic, contemporary approach to create colorful artworks that are unique editions; I do not use prints nor multiply my work.
Most of my works are on solid wooden frames with pure linen stretched firmly above and primed with classically handmade prime.

The images I paint have no analog in reality, and everything in the painting: color, structure, composition, is sourced in my imagination.

I maintain the view that an artwork is a metaphor, and everything in a painting is a language. In essence, the color talks, the shape talks, and the different elements in the painting communicate among themselves.
The whole painting communicates a non-verbal message that is transmitted to the perceiver.
Painting is a way of expressing oneself, an inherent necessity.

I believe that the communication among the creator-artwork-viewer aims to be intuitive rather than rational, which requires the person to enter into a different state of mind and to live through it, rather than intellectually understand it.
Abstract art influences the viewers the way music does. But in a way, each and every art is abstract. There is a certain degree of abstraction, even in concrete objectified paintings like Mona Lisa.
The more detached from reality a piece of art is, the higher level of abstraction it contains. But this detachment could be achieved through images that have analogs in reality, i.e., non-abstract images.
In and through Art, an artist creates a parallel reality, a Representational Reality.
This is something that represents reality but is not reality itself. I think this is the basis of the real, meaningful creative process.
In a way, Representational Reality is something that questions reality because it transfers the perception of something very specific to a notion of a qualitatively new level, transferring it beyond its concreteness. Representational reality is the tension between reality and its interpretation, between fact and creativity. If we say it reciprocally, every creative process is built on the foundation of Representational Reality. Representational reality is closely related to Metaphor, the motto of my art. Art, being a strict Representational Reality phenomenon, is only a reference, a symbol, a sign. Both creation and perception of art are, in essence, “receiving” or “consuming” of something for something other than itself.

If we try to define the concept of Representational Reality itself, maybe it would be described as something very similar to Metaphor: that psychological phenomenon that turns the literal into something non-literal; that turns the specific into something other than itself; the directive into indirect.
Currently, my art, being inspired by the psychoanalytical thought, is experienced, just like psychoanalysis, as an ongoing research of states of mind and feelings in relation to their connections to reality. Although my paintings are thematically related to psychoanalysis and their titles are wordplays featuring key psychoanalytical terms and concepts, they do not need a narrative in order to exist as artworks. They are open to viewers not familiar with the psychoanalytical theory.
I grew up and progressed as an artist in Eastern Europe and received my professional art training in Bulgaria, Holland, and the UK, which helped me furnish a generous and eclectic contemporary artistic style.
At its very core, though, my artistic style is just being me. New York was the place I really felt to be my true artistic home. My permanent relocation to New York inspired me to free herself artistically, and my artistic style changed.