Art by Karina Eibatova
Karina Eibatova is a visual artist who has previously published work on our website and has also appeared in Juxtapoz, the New York Times, Wired, and The Verge. She has shown her artworks in Vienna, Berlin, Tokyo, London, and Los Angeles. Karina, born in St. Petersburg during the USSR's twilight, has pursued her passion for art and established an international career and academic trajectory from a young age. At the moment Karina is based in Devon, UK.
Karina's first collaboration with a UK company was with Atlantic Records in 2010. The artist created the cover artwork for the Versaemerge "Fixed At Zero" disc. The popularity of Karina's graphics in the early 2010s brought her many projects around the world at the very beginning of her artistic career.
Karina began her fine art studies in 2007 at a foundation school in Sweden. In 2014, Karina studied at Central Saint Martins in London on the Fine Arts 4D faculty. She later studied art in Tokyo and attained her first MA in fine art from the Art Academy in Vienna.
Solos show Project Space 1, AUP, Plymouth
Later in 2020, she did a cover for the fabulous British musician Tom Adams, which will only be released this year. After, Karina pursued her second Master's degree at the Art University Plymouth in the Southwest of the UK. There, she reached a new level of creativity, where her practice took on a more personal and profound approach: her paintings increased in size, and from watercolour and pencil graphics, she began to focus more on oil painting.
Renowned artist Richard Kenton Webb, who is an award-winning artist and educator with over 30 years of extensive experience at institutions including The Slade School of Fine Art, admires Karina's work, and he has left a review of Karina's last exhibition.
“What am I considering when I encounter Eibatova’s visual poetry? A sublimity of mind and a genuine ambition for wonder. These thoughts have been my companion when I engage with this painter’s vision. A vision that is both compelling, fresh and unnerving. I am not necessarily comfortable or put at ease when I spent time with these accomplished paintings, I like that fact, they are enigmatic. What I find is I am compelled to look, digest and converse with them face to face, to behold and hear their voice asking me questions. They certainly ask why to any certainty I consider a fact of seeing.
I find I am writing the words, apocalyptical and visionary. We could discuss English qualities of the painter and printmaker John Martin or the writer and academic J.R.R.Tolkien, or the extraordinary Gray’s Anatomy as sources, if necessary, for inspiration. Yet we for all this referencing we are certainly in what painting is now, contemporary thinking and making, not in a past, but a forward thinking, inside cinema graphic questions of fiction that are rooted deep in nature.
We are in the language and use of colour. Where colour is used to carry a magnificent narrative, that speaks into the soul of the viewer from an exquisite detail to a soft velvetiness of flat colour. I witness the sensibilities of the Cornish painter Peter Lanyon, his eyes and inheritance of being in Devon and Cornwall. Where painting is made air-born. Her diptych that is so beautifully original and statically poised about this particular place and landscape. As a gull floats on the wing, looking, stationary high over hundreds of feet of cliff beside the ocean. It makes me understand being inside a thought.
Karina’s paintings are like a dial in slow motion materializing hope. Of being a witness inside a dream, and renewed because of it. Collectively the ten paintings in this exhibition organise a great sense of otherness that we have shared in a great calm, like witnessing a flower open into its glory, but it seems just for us alone.”
From the author’s manifesto
“Currently, my personal creative practice is centered on oil on canvas. I explore imagery drawn from nature, dreams and imagination and strive to create an immersive and contemplative experience for the viewer through color and symbolism. My painting is at the crossroads, somewhere abstract, in some places not so much: a landscape or a body, a stone or a tree. In my recent works I try to reflect the value of the human body and of life itself, without resorting to depicting human figures, I try to depict our inner world, a secret landscape full of organs and light. Through a combination of neon, dark and pastel colours I want to express a sense of hope”.
This year, Karina was awarded the “Artist of the Month” prize in Zima magazine, one of the most recognised Russian-speaking media projects based in London. One of her works is on display in the city centre of London this summer.
“Karina Eibatova’s works combine tenderness, organicity, lightness of abstract forms, painted with special care, expression and force, a kind of rumbling, reminiscent of works about the terrible judgment of the English Romanticism artist John Martin. In her paintings there is a certain confidence, power and resilience of a soft, feminine flow of forms – not something corporeal, not something cloudy, not something earthy and tangible, not something airy and elusive. This remarkable balance of opposites allows the viewer to feel a profound visual comfort. The works envelope the beholder like a soft blanket and immerse him or her in other levels of this visual aesthetic, where he or she encounters an intense vitality, some even doom. One plunges into this painting like a cloud, which, while outwardly harmless, carries thunder and lightning. Karina has been shortlisted for the prize several times and we are delighted to finally present her with the award she deserves”
Intriguingly, two individuals made a similar comparison with English painter, engraver, and illustrator John Martin, which prompts the audience to contemplate the relationship between the apocalyptic landscapes of the 19th century and Karina's dramatic works. We'll continue keenly observing this gifted artist's upcoming creative endeavours.
About the author
Arseny Vesnin founded Designcollector, a platform established in 2003 in Russia. Designcollector is one of the pioneering digital magazines dedicated to covering and supporting the digital art scene and creative communities in Russia and beyond. The platform showcases a variety of content related to digital art, design, and visual culture, providing artists, designers, and creatives with exposure and inspiration. Over the years, it has expanded to include digital art events like the Digital Decade, an exhibition featuring emerging visual artists and designers. Designcollector has always covered the intersection of art, design, music and culture.