“A Synthesis of Painting and Light” – Light Painting Rumyanka Bozhkova
Project: “A Synthesis of Painting and Light” – Light Painting
A patented project
The children look like me
The children do not look like me,
Each one of them gives me joy
Pebbles and broken bottles,
And like them, hard and fragile,
My heart rolls on the shore of the stars
Tanikawa Shuntaro
Viewing purely artistic problems through the prism of their solution in architecture, their application and function, is what comprises the work of the artist Prof. Rumyanka Bozhkova and her artistic manifestation. A categorical proof of the fact that there is a parallel between the ideas of combination of the two sources of art in her work is the project “A Synthesis of Painting and Light”, realized in paintings with additional inner lightning.
The transparent canvases become a new expressive opportunity for painting, a new motive for an artistic enquiry. The immediate suggestions of the stained glass of the architectural monuments from the Baroque and the Flaming Gothic provoke an interest towards light’s path through the canvas, through transparent and semi-transparent painting layers and through the varnished surface with deep embedded flowers, leaves and decorative shapes that are used in the paintings.
The area of the carved drawings looks for and discovers vastness, opens depth and suggests ideas. In the “dark room” of the sub-frame “screens” are placed consequently. The screens consist of nets with a sense of graphic, which, crossed by the light, complete the image with projections of dynamic raster lines. The nets are enveloped by colorful filters that add nuances to the artistic images. Technical devices control the light effects for their interval intensity and order, and thus the paintings breathe with varying rhythm.
The area of each painting, complemented with the volume of the sub-frame, appears as a “laboratory” for processing of the lights, a “reserve for growing and taming” the light effects, while on the front side of the canvas emboss is developing. The emboss offer the lights – cracks, to suddenly disappear, heights – for the casted shadows, deeply transparent “lakes of varnish layers”, in which natural flowers and leaves are bathing. Artistic excitements of Rumyanka Bozhkova are represented in independent exhibitions, praised and awarded in international forums for intellectual products and innovations, and realized as projects in Bulgaria and abroad.
Exactly in the dialogical form of implication the paintings are perceived. Of high value is the fact that the owner of such a painting could change it according to his own idea, moving the illuminated areas, changing their shape, size, number and intensity of color. Thus will appear a new accent of the meaning and theme, and the owner – interpreter will be taking part in the theme of the artist’s work: “The man who plays”.
The project “A synthesis of painting and light” offers unlimited amount of possibilities for an aesthetic experience and multifunctional, utilitarian usage of the paintings in the architectural environment – an exciting “voice” for its exterior and interior spaces.
The paintings could be perceived in both their looks – illuminated and non-illuminated. The daylight, skillfully embedded in the interior, will be changing their character.
Except for the possibilities of the small painting, the project foresees an increase of the size of the canvases, and their application as:
– Barrier walls
– Bright decorative screens
– Sliding or “flying” doors
– Walls
– Hanging transparent ceilings
– Panels – Filtering or shaping the light
– Screens for stage and theatre plays
– Modules for cinematographic space – designer solutions
– Interior and stage curtains
– Shades, and many more…Infinite and unique decisions.
By decreasing the format, the paintings could turn into:
– Decorative friezes
– Be embedded as beautiful azures in portals, interior doors, openings over windows, winter gardens, terraces, decorative covers…
The mobility of the paintings in this project – mobility in every regard – lightness, natural materials, flexible compliance with the trends and the personal taste, mastered technical time for their making, a wide spectrum of color, a changeable format etc. – make it desired and applicable in the work and aesthetic enrichment for a large scale of aficionados of the untraditional art.
The mobility of the paintings is encrypted in the movement of the lights behind the two-sided canvas. A looking has been made for the symbol of the eternal movement, in which both the author and the aficionado participate through the work of art.
Applications of the project “Light Painting”
The artistic message of the project “Light painting” provokes in the art classes the students’ curiosity to travel the space between “logical” and “illogical” on the edge of the academic drawing to the emotional expression of the soul experiences.
The goal is:
– The penetration of the idea through the inner I and “fertilizing” the outcome.
– Manifestation of new tendencies in the search for expressive means over the traditional knowledge of drawing, painting, modeling – “light paintings”.
“The playing kids” are like deviants. During the Inquisition the reading ones were killed. Before the books (in the époque of the apocrifs and heresy), a norm is only the sacred writing and its literal repetition.
“The insane, the insane – let them be alive!” exclaims Ivan Vazov – “Under the yoke”.
“I have only been given this life and I have but this life – as a chance to try and expand my boundaries” – this is the quiet inner revolution, of which Stefan Zveig is speaking – a change on the inside and on the outside – a participation in the expansion.
Merdzhanova Y. R., “Pentalogy”, p.23
With unmeasured artistic effort flows the work of taking the problem from “life-drawing” to “idea”.
The project offers a leading of the students through artistic spaces, instruments for their future personal and professional realization, showing that drawing is not only as a territory for performance, but also as a necessary “alphabet” for architecture’s speech and writing, providing a “high horizon” and a scale for width of the worldview, intolerance for boredom and tastelessness, a scale for personal presence, artistic self-esteem and self-confidence of the author (prof. R. Bozhkova) for the work of the Teacher of drawing in the Faculty of Architecture.
It becomes clear that there is a mutual process of breaking through, and while the teacher structures the drawing skill and knowledge of the student in a direction and in harmony with their future as architects, he himself walks on “architecture’s roads”, and leads with a searching artistic eye towards “discoveries” – connected with, motivated and satisfied by architecture. In that process the artistic and the teaching work enhance each other mutually.
The paintings give an occasion and an opportunity for artistic discussions with the students of architecture over topics of free experimentation and application of the results. They provide conversations about the communication not only between artists – painters and architects, architects and sculptors, architects and musicians, but also as a message to the young people that visual art in its mission is a dialogue between the author and the work of art, the work of art and the viewer, the viewer and the author with a deep and permanent constructiveness.