AksinyaI

Ksenia Vyacheslavovna Nagaeva was born in the city of Petropavlovsk, North Kazakhstan region, Republic of Kazakhstan on February 24, 1992.

She currently lives and works in Saint Petersburg.

At the age of 8, she became passionate about art and dedicated her entire life to it. After graduating from art school, there was a period of experimentation and development as an artist. She worked with watercolor, pastel, studied linocut and woodcut, oil painting, but ultimately chose acrylic for herself.

Since 2014, she has been a participant in various Russian and international exhibitions. Her works are held in the private gallery «Арт-Пантеон», where she worked from 2014 to 2020 and created about a thousand panels in the categories: «Lost Temples of the World and Russia», «Special Sacred Places», «Natural Temples», «Temples of the World» and in private collections in Russia.

Since graduating from university, the artist has actively developed in decorative and applied painting, gradually forming her future artistic style and love for abstract painting. Working on each new panel for the gallery, the artist tried to find new methods of visual expression to convey the image. This was her own visual language, based on a personal, philosophical perception of the surrounding world. Great attention was paid to the surface of the painting, the picture plane itself, which has enormous significance for shaping the space of the image. Gradually, the manner of depiction on the panels became more generalized and decorative, the brushstrokes thick and rough, details receded into the background, while color, shapes, and the mood they conveyed became the main focus.

The period of work at the gallery (2014-2020) largely became foundational and formed a deep understanding of themes such as: history, the connection between religion and philosophy, human culture, their worldview and outlook on life, customs, traditions, and rituals. All of this, to some extent, will be embedded in the main idea of her future paintings.

In 2017, the artist moved to Saint Petersburg, while still continuing her collaboration with «Арт-Пантеон». 

In 2020, she became a member of the ROO TS «Eurasian Art Union», Guild: Painting, Section: Abstract Painting. She continued her artistic and exhibition activities under the Artists' Union. Currently, the artist has left the ranks of the Eurasian Union.

2019 was a year of searching and attempts to move away from decorative and applied art. During this period, the painting «Abstraction 27» was created. It was executed in the style of early abstract expressionism, where in the final version color, texture, and rough physicality, sharp and dense gestures of paint application literally pierce the canvas. This style of painting would be preserved in the artist’s subsequent works.

2020 became a turning point in the artist’s painting practice. After joining the Artists' Union, Ksenia Nagaeva began to pay more attention to working with color and form, increasingly favoring abstract and emotional painting. During this period, a series of abstract works was created: «Sun» 2020, «Abstraction 79». The work is an experience of emotions of loss, a personal dialogue with the object of loss. Also completed was the work «Tenderness» (an abstract attempt, through rough forms, textures, and color, to convey the uniqueness of moments).

From this point on, the character of the compositions and the special treatment of surface form the specific dynamics of Ksenia Nagaeva’s canvases. With a deep textured layer directly on the canvas, the artist creates a dense palette on which her creative concept is technically and precisely formed.
The author has found her signature style, her technical techniques using a palette knife, relief textures, and auxiliary materials (cardboard, lace, coarse fabrics, etc.), which allows the painting to become voluminous, multilayered, and polyphonic. Her painting is textured. The brushstrokes are rhythmic and free. In the expression of color and emotional conveyance, there is a sense of moderation and taste.

Also in 2020, the artist painted the triptych «Art of Form». The basis of the work is the division of space into lines and shapes, through which a sense of unity of form is achieved. The main idea: to build the canvas composition solely through simple forms.

The canvas «Oxygen» 2020. In this work, pure paint was used straight from the tube to express extreme feelings with extreme color.

During this period and continuing to the present, a series of miniature works has been created, the main idea of which is to quickly, without corrections, using available means and directly on the canvas, depict an abstract composition, exclusively as an embodiment of pure, unadulterated emotions on the canvas.

In 2021, the canvas «Urbanus» was painted (a philosophical work reflecting the destructive impact of humans on their surrounding space, taken to the extreme, and how humans themselves are tormented in the world they have created) in mixed media; this work laid the future trend for all subsequent compositions by Ksenia Nagaeva. She is exploring all possibilities of working with volume and textures in painting, paying increasing attention to the initial preparatory layers. Textured paste, rough textures, and sand are used more frequently. Brushstrokes become freer and more voluminous, colors purer.

The blending and richness of associations evoked by the paintings become characteristic of the artist’s work. Her main goal is the ability to create entire ensembles that will resonate in harmony with the vibrations of her experiences. And increasingly, the artist tries with her works to show the viewer something rather than to say or leave a deep meaning. She wants to make her viewer feel, because all explanations should come from the completed experience of interaction between the painting and its observer.