I believe that creating something meaningful, impactful, and valuable requires time, patience, depth, inspiration, and authenticity.

The first large painting from the ballet series was created in 2018. I titled it “Among the Stars”, inspired by one of the beautiful poems by Radosveta Avramova – Caribiana. That title eventually gave its name to this entire exhibition.

In the following years, I continued developing studies for more ballet-themed paintings, as well as several female nude figures with surrealistic elements. Gradually, the concept for the exhibition began to take shape. For me, it has been a long journey and an exploration of my inner universe—a reflection of the delicate sensitivity with which I perceive the world.

Continue reading About the exhibition “Among the Stars” at Acrista Cafe.

Life, they say, is what you make of it.

This year, after a long period of hustling, I finally feel that I am choosing what is best for me, with self-love, with the full knowledge that my choices and approach to work and life in general, although desired by many, are not particularly popular, except perhaps among digital nomads and here and there the intrepid self-employed like myself.

Yes, I am more of a nomad this summer than ever before. For me, breaking away from absolute identification with work gives me freedom, which is a path to enrichment, charging, expanding horizons, exploring the world, gaining another perspective on myself.

Continue reading The Gifts of Summer at Acrista Cafe.

Today I present to you an exceptional Spanish artist whose work I first saw a few years ago in his hometown of Valencia. In fact, one of the main reasons I chose Madrid for our nomadic month was my desire to visit the Museo Sorolla in the Spanish capital. Therefore, on a hot June day, we walk to the wonderful house with a garden and with great pleasure immerse ourselves in its world, in search of inspiration, charging and enrichment.

Who is Joaquin Sorolla

Born in 1863 in Valencia, Joaquin Sorolla lost his parents as a child and together with his sister were raised by his aunt and uncle.

Continue reading Joaquin Sorolla – The Master of Light at Acrista Cafe.

I present to you a project, the implementation of which brought me great pleasure in all its aspects – from communicating with the client, through the creation process, to the arrangement of the picture in the interior. “Paint Me Love” is a commissioned oil painting that I created for a specific location and is my largest commission of a female figure to date. The whole project lasted one year.

When we started discussing the commission, the client and her husband had already purchased several of my other paintings. She was already familiar with the process of commissioning a painting (the article The Artistic Challenge can be read here and the rest of the details of how to commission an Acrista Art painting are in the FAQ on acrista.com) and we went straight to discussing which series / painting of mine we would be the inspiration for hers.

Continue reading Creating “Paint me Love” – commission artwork at Acrista Cafe.

The art world is full of clich?s, but it’s never too late to learn something new. The YouTube channel Great Art Explained is proof of that and is a precious art find.

In general, I am not a huge fan of “explained” series, but this one turned out to be very different. In it, curator and gallerist James Payne focuses on a particular famous painting or artist and makes an in-depth analysis of the work / artist, placing them in the context of the times in which they were created / worked, the family they grew up in, the political and social environment.

Continue reading “Great Art Explained” at Acrista Cafe.

Over the past few years, I have observed with sadness and weariness that the efforts I make on a daily basis to maintain the Facebook page fall far short of the desired results, needed for me to function as a freelance artist.

As a person, who does almost everything by myself, this means I spend a huge amount of time, energy and mental resources figuring out “what to post each day” to keep the page “alive”. I invest in expensive art products, photo sessions, video scripts, video shooting, video editing, planning posts, writing texts for them… And all this only reaches my top 10 fans (thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support ), out of all the 20K that have liked and/or followed my page, because that’s how the algorithm “works”.

Continue reading Out of the Matrix at Acrista Cafe.

Those of you who follow my work may know, that this March marks 20 years since I created the website acrista.com and the Acrista Art brand was born. The first half of this period I spent mastering the soft pastels as a material and the artist who greatly influenced me during this time and was a sort of virtual mentor for me, was the pastelist Harley Brown.

I came across him after subscribing to International Artist magazine, where Harley had regular articles, sharing wisdom on the artist’s life and priceless practical advices on the creative process.

Continue reading Harley Brown – soft pastel artist at Acrista Cafe.

“The thing we label as talent is not a single ability. It is a complex mixture of motive, curiosity, receptivity, intelligence, sensitivity, good teaching, perseverance, timing, sheer luck, and countless other things.”

“Serious painting is not something that can be learned casually. You must be willing to sacrifice many other things.”

“I regard my disasters as invitations to learn more.”

“Art happens in the mind of the person seeing them.”

“Don’t reject difficult ideas simply because you fail to grasp them immediately. Put them on hold until you do, then decide.

Continue reading Quotes from “Alla Prima”, Richard Schmid at Acrista Cafe.

It’s been a while since I have been impressed so thoroughly by an artist – from the chosen medium (enamel paint), from developing technique by trial and error, combining several working places with a gallery, to market positioning, scope (huge canvases delivered worldwide), personal approach (he hand delivers all of his art in the UK) and experimenting with different mediums in addition to paintings – aluminum sculptures, art with cast resin blocks, enamel paint on carbon fiber…

Ed, who creates under the label Swarez, is absolutely self-thought and although he’s often told that ‘this can be painted by my five year old child too’ and ‘he’s not an artist’ with such abstractions, his story is so inspiring that I read thoroughly every page of his website and watched all available video materials on his Youtube channel.

Continue reading Swarez Art at Acrista Cafe.

Bohemian Rhapsody: I am not one of the devoted fans of Queen who compare the movie scene by scene with documentary footage from concerts and interviews. For me the move is exceptionally well made, and the role of Rami Malek is inhumanely difficult and perfectly played given the vast admiration for Freddie Mercury. In the interviews from the movie release interesting facts ‘from the kitchen’ came up, for example, that the first shot scene was the Live Aid concert (!), the work with movement couch, details on make-up and costumes. I would watch it for the second time, so I am looking forward to the 5-hours directors cut.

Continue reading February movie mix at Acrista Cafe.

I knew that the second season of Genius would be inspiration, contemplation and very much needed context, as if a long time ago you had started putting together a puzzle of somebody’s live, but you missed pieces and reasons.

A few things keep resonating in me after the ten episodes for this extraordinary, whimsical, driven innovator which some would call a prick, a rake, an egoist and they might be right depending on their viewpoint:

• his purposefulness and outright refusal to compromise
• his fierce desire to surpass a colleague by whom he felt awed (Matisse) and thus to surpass himself
• his hectic search for the new, the different, the radical
• using women as source of love energy, mystery, inspiration that incessantly keep him “hungry” for life
• his unconditional rejection of any rules
• placing art before and above all (which is a condition for greatness as long as one is ready to pay the price)

Continue reading “Genius: Picasso” at Acrista Cafe.

I doubt there is a better choice for the role of the growling and eccentric Turner than Timothy Spall (I’m not sure why he was not nominated for this role), who brilliantly plays his blunt and at times unrefined character carrying pencil and sketchbook everywhere to gather ideas.

Continue reading “Mr. Turner” at Acrista Cafe.