Feature Article: Driven

Source: Donna Cedar-Southworth, Élan Magazine

Date: May 2006

Though his portfolio suggests solid maturity, reminiscent of the Old Masters, 21-year-old Valentin Melik feels he's just "evolving" as an artist.  One wonders just how much better his work can become by the time he's 30, 40 or 50 years old.  This hard-working student, modest and mature beyond his years, is certainly an artist to watch.

Valentin is in Leesburg, visiting his parents during a two-week break from his studies at the Russian Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg.  Born in Moscow, he moved to the United States with his family in 1994 and completed grades six through nine.  When his family relocated to Ukraine, they enrolled Valentin in the highly prestigious, fiercely competitive St. Petersburg State Academic Lyceum of the Russian Academy of Arts.  Looking back on the school's tough academic curriculum, Valentin remembers his art courses as the most challenging.  "Math was not as difficult as the art subjects," he says.  With such a natural talent, one might think he's joking.  Not a bit.  "With math and physics, you have formulas.  You sit down and figure them out -- art is not logic -- it is was more complex...  I wouldn't know how to explain it in English.  [Art is] not a logical thing that you can just sit down and figure out -- it's something you have to come to understand."

It appears he has.  He is in his third year of the six-year program at the Academy.  Valentin explains that unlike American art schools, the Academy offers no electives; rather, it prescribes a very strict program which each student must follow: "The first year, you study the head -- no one cares if you like to do abstract of variations on the person -- you have a model, you sit down and draw it, and then you're graded upon how well you do it...  Sometimes you'd have two weeks, sometimes one week; second semester for the first year, we were given a month to do a portrait with hands.  The second year, we'd have to do a portrait with head and torso in two weeks.  We work six days a week."  There's a two-year anatomy program as well, and drawing, and painting.  In short, the school is incredibly "intense," he says.  In his sixth year at the Academy, Valentin will concentrate on diploma work, which features everything he has mastered.  Then he will graduate with a master's degree.

Valentin divides his work into three major categories: drawings, paintings and compositions.  His body of work includes an extensive array of portraits, still lifes, compositions and some landscapes.  His many sketches reveal a particular mastery of figurative/representational art.

Works such as "Old Man," "Woman's Portrait" and "Boris" have a  timeless appeal to them.  Though not completely satisfied with these pieces -- he's his own worst critic, after all --  Valentin understands they have a universal appeal because they depict symbols.  "The 'Old Man' looks like St. Peter might, and the veil on 'Woman's Portrait' also works as a symbol," he says.  He's somewhat happier with his portrait of "Robinson," noting "the material here is fresher...  There's a certain point where the material looks its best.  Sometimes you can overdo that and kill it off."

He's also happy with "Shmitty," a sanguine portrait he drew because he was interested in the details of the subject's coat, hat, musket and gadgets.  Moreover, he feels he's captured Shmitty's character, which. of course, is essential to a good portrait.  "You don't want portraits to look like photographs or wax figures," he says.  "You have to pick out what works best -- some things you just don't have to paint."

Still lifes are where he's "comfortable...  I have basically [gained a] certain knowledge, technically, of what I'm doing.  I have fun with them.  For portraits, I really concentrate."

But he brings it all together in his compositions.  In 2002, Nancy Parisi reviewed the work of then-18-year-old Valentin for the newsweekly Artvoice: "Paintings by this young artist have depth and confidence that unabashedly embrace Old Master sensibilities in lieu of more trendy, post-modernist ideals."

Valentin admits he "likes to express artistic power in majestic images that excite the soul, arousing it above everyday occurrences."  And he does just that in compositions such as "Refugees," "Father and Son." "Father's Armor" and "Flight to Egypt," paintings that simply beg to tell stories.  "In painting and drawing, you're just studying so that in a composition you'll be able to portray correctly a head, proportions, etc.," he says.  "In compositions, you bring it all together -- it shows the way you think.  In a portrait, you convey the subject's character; in landscapes, the maximum you convey is the emotions you have about the scene...  In compositions, that's where you can convey to the viewer what you think about the surroundings.  The first criterion for a good composition is [that] the viewer has to be able to understand it when they look at the work."

© 2011 valentin melik