Ina Belous

 

     One is struck by two contrasting features in the creative work of Ina Belous – strength and feminity. The former displays itself in the artist’s ability to “experience” an object, transforming it by her temperament as though she could experience its motives and wishes, disclosing it in the colors, composition, style and power of her dynamic brush work. The latter, in the lyrical nature of her perception of the world and her gift for unreserved emotions, a bright and kind philosophy and the highly labor consuming execution, created particularly by her special and very individual painting techniques.

 

     These features are embodied in the artist’s paintings, not separately, but as an organic whole forming that kind of distinctness and ingenuity which distinguish a real artist from an eclectic.

 

     It is quite likely that the real world is somewhat different but Ina Belous, in her creative work, introduces her own life and experience, quite freely and without evident tension, while welding the never dimming memories of the past with the present day experiences and with her anticipation of the future. Such are the reminiscences of the Ukraine where her creative youth took shape influenced by the motifs of poetic and pictorial folklore. The purity and spontaneity of her perception of the world, in which folklore is preserve and transformed poetically, acquires metaphoric and philosophical attributes inherent to creative maturity an which are suggestive of what she may still accomplish in the future.

 

     The creative work of Ina Belous cannot be defined unequivocally and her canvases cannot be reduced to a common denominator. Many of her paintings are distinguished by bright, theatrical and spectacular effects; a rigid rhythm and developed ornamental features of the picture plane which appear to be influenced by the artist’s previous fruitful work in the field of tapestry. Some of her paintings are influenced by children’s drawings and are marked by the artist’s desire to master the unique capability of children to perceive in a fresh, precise and laconic manner and to concentrate, not on the illusion but, on the essence of a phenomenon. 

 

     However, in her other works, particularly in her still lifes, Ina Belous brilliantly demonstrates a mature professionalism. One of her most remarkable properties is a strong and determined gift for color; her highly aesthetic attitude towards colors and the unescapable attention to every brush stroke. Her use of the diversity of nuances and contrasts create an entire culture of color solutions. The emotional and semantic messages of the color have defined the distinguishing features of Ina Belous as a painter.

     The humane characteristics of Ina Belous are revealed in the charming archness of the artist, her delicate sense of humor, her particular kind of irony, with its inherent creative, not destructive, features. In the process of her creative endeavour these features are embodied in a wealth of, at times, unexpected associations, metaphoric pictorial thinking, and most of all in a sharp grotesque which determines the very essence of her creative approach.

 

     And the same features enabled the artist to overcome the stagnation of academic and other stereotypes, to find the inner, spiritual, unconstrained and free self-expression, to master the language of modern art and its inexhaustible potential, paradoxical, metamorphoses. In our highly technological age, which has sunk into oblivion the utopian ideas of harmony between man and nature, Ina Belous persistently affirms its highest values. These ideals were always present in the artist’s creative work but in the recent paintings “Dandelions”, “Sunflowers”, “Lilies of the Valley” and others they become the dominant ones! Free from any bias or declaration the paintings appeal to our feelings, touch the tender points of personal and public conscience. The pantheistic sesation of nature, its spirituality and eternal, invariable beauty constitute the ever present constant of the creative world outlook of Ina Belous.

 

     The counterpoints of bright light and shade, joy and sadness, anxieties and hopes of our times form the basis of the creative work of Ina Belous. But its general tonality is bright, optimistic and cheerful. 

 

     The humanistic nature of the artist’s talent, her deep respect and love of everything living, her belief that life is filled with beauty and that the purpose of life is in living itself are in opposition to apocalyptic visions of postmodernism.

 

Grigory Ostrovsky

Doctor of Arts criticism