Vera Belyavskaya

My work draws inspiration from the spontaneity and honesty of children’s drawings, where expressive mark-making and imperfect images bring raw energy. I’m fascinated by how children see and interpret the world, and I explore how much can be conveyed with just the essential elements of an image, using simplified marks and color to create recognizable yet pared-down forms. I primarily work with acrylics and tempera sticks, a medium that combines drawing and painting. This allows me to ‘draw’ continuously with paint, bringing a more gestural, childlike quality to my work. I sketch daily from life and develop these studies into larger pieces from memory. Emotionally, I seek to evoke the viewer’s inner child. This theme is central to my practice, as it connects to my own childhood experiences in a post-Soviet country, where feelings of self-loss shaped my artistic voice. Through drawing and painting, I aim to rediscover lost connections of compassion and love, seeing the world as a place to heal and reinvent oneself.