Alexander Volkov

          Keys to Everything
Alexander Volkov • Oil                      Early Snowfall
Alexander Volkov • Oil                         Aspen Showers
Alexander Volkov • Oil                          October Evening
Alexander Volkov • Oil                     Night Divides the Day
Alexander Volkov • Oil   
                      Aspen September
Alexander Volkov • Oil   
                        Indian Summer
Alexander Volkov • Oil   
                      Aspen Thunder
Alexander Volkov • Oil   
                          Aspens
Alexander Volkov • Oil   
                        A Moment of Fall
Alexander Volkov • Oil   
                 

ALEXANDER VOLKOV

 

Alexander Volkov was born in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad), Russia in 1960. He started painting with oil as a high school student. From the age of 7 to 17 he attended a special English school and in 1986 graduated from the Department of Physics at Leningrad State University. Following graduation, Alexander worked as an animator at Leningrad Studio of Science Films and later as a stage artist in a small Leningrad theatre. Volkov first started to exhibit his paintings in 1981 with a group of 200 Leningrad artists known as the "Brotherhood of Experimental Arts", a conglomeration of "underground" art groups active in Leningrad at the time. Later, he joined a splinter group called "Ostrov" or "Island" which united 30 artists who felt that their work was neither ideologically socialist realism nor extreme avant garde. 

 

In 1987, Volkov met a traveling American student, Barbara, in Russia and married her. They moved to the United States in 1990 and built a home in rural New Jersey. Volkov continued to paint from memory those scenes of Leningrad that had found him fame in Russia. Seven years later he returned to Leningrad for the first time. The city’s change was so profound that he felt what he had known and loved was no longer there. Upon returning to New Jersey, he took a new look at his home and found that the light, color, and shapes he loved in Leningrad were also found in the simple rural settings of New Jersey. 

 

Volkov cites many different sources of inspiration in creating his artistic career. He reluctantly refers to himself a "self-taught" artist because he believes that "We really teach ourselves. If you want to learn, you will always find someone to learn from, be they dead or alive, great or unknown. you will learn from everything you see and hear around you - if you are willing to pay attention. perhaps, during my forming years, I have made a lot of unnecessary mistakes, but at the same time I have had the enormous advantage of picking my own teachers". Some of the teachers Volkov chose to emulate were William Turner, Vermeer, Franz Hals, Rembrandt and many others from the previous centuries as well as Edward Hopper, Maxfield Parrish and Andrew Wyeth of the 20th century. They also were Beethoven and Satie, Nabokov and Steinbeck, Einstein and Tarkovsky. They were school and university friends, physics professors and struggling artists.  

 

"They have all taught me something - how to see, how to hear, how to understand things and, most importantly, how to understand myself. I cannot separate any one of their voices from the voice which I hear inside of me and which has become my own voice." 

 

Combining a lifelong fascination with architecture, landscape and still-life subjects, Alexander brings drama and poetic ｅxpression into his work. With his unique vision, he merges mood and atmosphere, evoking powerful emotions that create harmony.

 

"There is no greater mystery to me than the conflict of light and dark. In the way they clash and penetrate each other, there is the source of everything. Whether I paint a landscape, a still-life or a portrait, within it there is always a story of light traveling through darkness." 

  

Alexander now lives in Holland Township, New Jersey with his wife Barbara and their three children, Alice, Peter and Nicholas.

  

Education

1976 - 1978   Academy Minerva, Groningen drawing/painting

1978 - 1983   Academy Minerva, Groningen painting/art history 1st degree techniques: Oil, pastel, and combined techniques.

 

 

 

 

Mystic Heart