Denis Sarazhin

(LEADING ARTIST INSPIRATION 1)

Sarazhin’s work has had a great influence on my style and how I find inspiration. Sarazhin’s pieces depict a tranquillity only found in dreams, one which is reached once our judgements are stripped and only our core values, emotions and hopes are left. Only once the corruptions and instability of the reality humans create for themselves are taken away can one feel ethereal. It's pure escapism. I liked how he paints figures - making them curl into unnatural positions which creates some sort of torment within the pieces. This made me think about the links this has to the individual. The contorting and struggling versions of themselves swim in their mind, the bodies have an elegant and tranquil quality to them yet they serve as the tormentors within one’s head creating a sense of irony. I was intrigued by his style of painting and the colour palette he uses for each piece. He carefully builds up his paintings with deep and contrasting colours without merging them together, leaving the visible brush strokes that serve to make the paintings evocative and mesmerising. Sarazhin’s style of painting also accentuates the features and blemishes of the skin on his figures, making them seem aged and worn out. I believe that the raw and realistic values of these pieces have revealed the harsh reality of ageing and inevitable decay. I was initially drawn to the use of vibrant purples and blues that were like electricity running through his pieces. Immediately I was inspired to create pieces that have icy reflections and cold shadows

In an interview, Sarazhin was asked about what a lot of his work means, in response he stated; “ I think that the characters in my paintings themselves play the role of the main scenario like those in the theatre's tasks” and linked it to why he doesn’t find character identification an important aspect of the painting process and instead creates an embodied emotion using the human as a host. Much like Sarazhin’s embodiments of emotion I aimed to create human-like apparitions of the conscience. The way Sarazhin composes his pieces enlightened me of the plasticity of the human body and the fluidity that can be created from the limbs

In this image, ‘Pantomime 3 (2014)’, Oil on canvas, Sarazhin has managed to create a piece filled with contortion while positioning the bodies in a way that makes them flow like silk - this is seen in the hand behind the back of the 3rd figure which is elegantly relaxed in a straining position. Another example of this is the subtle arch of the back seen on the middle figure which creates the suggestion that he is ‘rising up’ to his discomfort, or embracing it. These indirect portrayals of emotion influenced me to think more carefully about the figures I was painting and how I could form a series of paintings that show a mental development by emphasising stain or relaxation in the limbs. The atmosphere is dark, putting all of the observers focused on the detail of the bodies, also suggesting that this is a representation of a mental state. To me, the emotion in this piece is a devastating feeling of conflict - one half wants to be free from this inner conflict but the other wants to remain in the soft confinement of their distress; this is self development and the calling for understanding. The different skin shades of the bodies creates a chain of tone where the pale blue skin leads into the green-orange and to the red-brown adding to the quiet fluidity of the piece, this could also be seen as a hint to having different people in the piece, however one could argue that the bodies are all the same person but just at different times or states of mind - all past experiences, which could explain why one body looks pale and worn out. This proposition links well with my theme of the pursuit of living in the now and its importance in order to live a fulfilling life. For example, the pale, worn out body may be a part of the individual's life they want to discard - evident in its dissimilarity to the other figures in the piece rejecting any association with the pain of the past. However if one is to live truly, one mustn't have an intangible dark force over their conscience.

Sarazhin denies us of creating an empathetic understanding of the figures through the depiction of facial expressions, instead, we are forced to decipher their meanings through body language and style of painting - as stated, Sarazhin “disowns ‘conceptualism’ by focusing on the body’s communicative potential rather than that of language previously emphasised by post-structuralism” (D.S. Graham & Harriet LLoyd-Smith, 2017), one can delve deeper into the rationale behind why faces are not of importance in many of his paintings, and whether individuality is nothing more than a fabricated mechanism we’ve deceived ourselves into believing so as to not be shopworn or unoriginal, for if were not individual, who are we and what is our purpose? This could further explain ‘Pantomime 3’ and the conflict of emotions within the painting, where a person may be coming to terms with the inevitable mundanity of life and confusion that comes with existing surrounded by people who are a reflection of themselves.

This sort of anonymity inspires me, I'd like to explore it in my final piece as it creates a hidden story within the bodies, especially when my concept links to the objectification and Bain of being in a woman's body

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