Marina Lukyanova
Marina Lukyanova was born in Leningrad, to an architect and a teacher
of mathematics. Her father, the architect, and a skilled watercolourist,
would return home from all over Russia with sketches he´d made during his
frequent travels.
It was he who trained Marina from early childhood on to reproduce on paper
life´s beauty, whenever and wherever she should find it. Marina spent every
summer of her childhood with her parents in the country, cycling around lakes
and through fields, always accompanied by her paintbox.
So it came about that the natural beauty of northern Russia became for her a
treasure chest of artistic inspiration.
From 1982-87 Marina attended an art school for young students. In 1989 she
began her formal studies in the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, where
for 250 years already before her the most famous of Russian artists
and architects had been receiving their training.
This university traditionally places equal value on its faculties of architecture,
graphics and watercolour. Marina graduated from this Academy in 1996, choosing
art for her profession.
Since leaving the Academy Marina has been living out her dream of combining
through travel the discovery of new places and people with her search for artistic
inspiration. She enjoys the beautiful way that unpredictable events
occur and merge with her chosen lifestyle. For the past few years Marina
has been fascinated by Italy and its culture. She currently spends her summers
there, painting. Italy, she says, has brought more sun and light to her work,
also to the book illustrations she does in winter at home in St. Petersburg.
Marina includes as her sources of inspiration the French impressionists, the NABI
group, Picasso, Turner and the Russian “Silver Age“. At present, she considers
the Italian Renaissance to be her “deepest ocean of inspiration“.
