MFA Thesis Exhibition

COMPASSES, Alla Broeksmit’s MFA Thesis Exhibition featured at the New York Studio School, 2017

Alla Broeksmit Featured in New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting & Sculpture’s MFA Thesis Exhibition 2017
Wednesday, May 17, 2017 – May 31, 2017
New York Studio School
8 West 8th Street
New York City
If we imagine a distant country, we see the refection of the shimmering golden domes and the vast expansive forests crowded with poplar trees. Suddenly we hear the metallic chains, thuribles are burning incense, the bells are roaring. I am on the edge of the world. I am seeing it all, the eternal and the finite, the trees, the flowers, the light, the dark, the stars, the circles of smoke, the hands and feet entangled, the people kissing, leaving and arriving. I am seeing it all, the queens, the kings, the birds, the rivers, the clouds, the bridges and the sky, the medieval buildings, the Cathedrals, the houses, the men are sitting in them. The women and the children are running; the silhouettes are touching me.

Memories are central to how I create images. In this new series of paintings I am referring to incidents from my past as a mean to dissect my own identity as an immigrant. I was among the ones who have lost everything, the disinherited, the poor, the abandoned. Forty years ago, I escaped the repression and totalitarianism of the Soviet Union. I left my people behind, members of my family, my friends.

Before I paint, I keep my eyes closed and they appear again, as clear as it was when I was lost in Vienna, my child in my arms. These images are behind each stroke of paint. I utilize this particular psychological content and emotion, embedded in my origins, to feed me and to develop – visually – my new iconography within the layers of paint in my paintings.