Inspiration
What inspires you to do your best work?
Like love, inspiration is both vital and elusive. I am inspired by objects and places. However, the most significant motivation is the shared human experience. Ironically, the best way to understand shared experience is to better understand specific people---their internal characters, yes, but also, for an artist, to seek evidence of that internal self in the external, physical selves. The professional artist's model who poses nude is a brave and giving person, a partner to share the undisguised reality of being corporeal. Most people have no idea how grueling is the work of a good model. A good artist's model--creative and artistic, unfazed by surgical-like examination and quickly-painful poses, is what most representational artists hope for but seldom have. This video short talks about my painting "Muse," which is inspired by such partnerships.
A video short about Akhriev's "Muse," by Helene Hayman
Going to China
This week my wife and I each sent three pastel paintings to the Ming Gallery in Suzhou, China. We are honored to be two of six artists invited for cultural exchange between the Association of Spanish Pastel Painters, where we are members, and the Chinese Association of Pastel Painters. Here are thumnail images of some the paintings going for the March exhibition:
An excellent late Winter and early Spring to each of you. Daud Akhriev