"Joy is the fuel of the heart that leaves particles of light and love everywhere we pass." Oprah Winfrey
Description
From the 8th of September to the 5th of October in the space of the Art Gallery Le Papillon in Varna, Aneta Yalamova takes us with her painting exhibition "The Wellspring of Joy" to a beautiful past time of timeless values. Her cheerful works in a retro-naive style retain the warmth of the flying summer with nostalgic nuances, taking us for a walk through the streets in the 20s and 30s of the 20th century in old Tarnovo, old Varna or in the countryside. This favorite period of Bulgarian history for Yalamova is a time of rapid development and growth of the Bulgarian city and village with the incoming European orders, fashion, cars, railways and is perhaps the most romantic time of ideals, new hopes, respect for old traditions and their interweaving with the new, of longing to be together, united in our joy.
In this exhibition with stories from over 20 canvases, Yalamova as an artistic storyteller - documentarian colorfully illustrates the time of the old city, with colorful retro cars, long dresses, small hats, elegant suits, with school caps and berets, with sailor uniforms, romantic meetings of lovers or serenades, with winter rinks on the Yantra, a time when women washed their rugs in the river. With her paintings, she preserves the joy of rural holidays, weddings, the warmth of even simply welcoming guests to a village, where Bulgarian values are rooted and where, in her opinion, we draw from our humanity. The subjects of her works are kind, imbued with naive love, nostalgic melancholy, executed in a combination of bright color and light with dense and fresh color harmonies, typical of the iconographic tradition, enhancing the feeling of joy of beauty. The artist searches for and finds the themes for them among the charm of the old city architecture and in the traditions that have preserved the spirit and meaning of the national holidays and life related to the beliefs of the Bulgarians. Perfectionism, a thin brush and her typical narrative compositional form of superimposing houses, people, carts, chimneys, fountains in height while building her paintings, are distinctive features of the artist's creative manner. Her painting is comprehensible and radiant, strong as a plastic suggestion and poeticizes the natural connection between the countryside and the city, seeing the city in its medieval essentials, illuminated by grandeur.
What makes all her works memorable and special is the serene feeling flowing from her canvases, the sparkling colors, with the feeling of a soft filter of yellow-pink, like reading stills from old tapes, but also inducing a smile and affection in the viewer, when she tells us about revival streets, cafes, beautiful old city architecture, little stories from everyday life, people celebrating or young men with guitars picking on girls. What is specific in all her works is the recognizable authentic author's stylization of the figures and their roundness, masterfully executed to fine details, and above all the general feeling of joy. Thus, quite naturally, the theme that unites the paintings in the current exhibition "The Wellspring of Joy" stands out. Works bursting with warm vivid colors, smiling faces of people celebrating life because they are together, create a sense of nostalgia for perhaps past values, romance, purity and beauty of relationships that disappear in the modern world, but can be preserved and passed on to the next generations through art.
