Background & Techniques
Aelita Andre is a professional abstract painter of Russian heritage, currently living in Melbourne, Australia with her mother Nikka and her father Michael. She is a member of NAVA (National Association for the Visual Arts).
When her father placed one of his canvases on the floor to paint on one occasion, Aelita crawled onto it and began dabbing and smearing the paint with such a conviction and passion that her father let her alone to continue. He placed another canvas beside his on the floor and let her paint on her own.
Her works are so vivid and expressive; so full of energy and depicting amazing subjects. "As soon as she finished her first acrylic on canvas, I saw the MIR Russian Space Station surrounded by cherry blossoms. It was just so poignant and evocative" The question of intention is just not relevant. What matters is the impact on the viewer - the admiration and pleasure the works evoke and the discoveries each viewer makes within the works.
Aelita is obsessed with painting, running around demanding "painting, painting!" and "kist, kist!" (the Russian word for 'paintbrush'). Now a worldwide sensation Aelita's rise began from simultaneous front page articles in both leading Australian newspapers: The "Sydney Morning Herald" and "The Age". She was featured by every major television network and her paintings continue to ignite heated debates around the world about art.
In other words Aelita combines ‘non-conscious’ techniques and discernable intended abstract depictions of reality/objects. From the ‘cosmic’ depiction of nebulae (after watching BBC space documentaries) to ‘ariel color mapping techniques’, through to the microscopic - paintings of ants etc. Her style and subject matter is eclectic and wide ranging.
Aelita’s work is improvised combined with deliberate techniques: it doesn’t have a sense of over determination or being too purposeful and planned - characteristics that can adversly affect adult abstract paintings by making them contrived or ugly through being angst ridden. Aelita takes risks yet in the end her paintings arrive at and attain coherency.
...and some favourite quotes:
“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” - Edgar Degas
“Science is what we do to keep us from lying to ourselves”
“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.” - Francis bacon
“There is no must in art because art is free.” - Wassily Kandinsky
“Art is whatever you can get away with.” - Andy Warhol
QUOTES
The following is a selection of quotes from Australian Art critic Robert Nelson from “The Next Big Thing” segment about Aelita on “60 Minutes”:
(Aelita’s) “paintings display a gestural vivacity”
(Aelita’s paintings are) “joyful, happy spontaneous paintings that could be proudly hung anywhere.”
“Her paintings have something quite magical by virtue of the involvement of this 2 year old kid.”
“...that a two year single handedly applies the colours is fantastic...”
“What she is doing has such an educational benefit....Aelita is learning how to paint at such an accelerated pace..if only we had been given that opportunity.”
“This is something unique...the parents have recognized the cultural benefit of a child painting. These works are original.”
“We are seduced by this wonderful project that this little kid can do something so gorgeous....it seems redemptive...it’s in all of us until it’s eliminated by the long process of education”.
“Aelitas paintings are worth an international audience.”
“For the first time child art is being monumentalized”.
“Aelita is having the freedom to do something marvellous with paint.”
“Aelita's art is an antidote to the oppresive qualities of expectation in western painting.”
“If these works had been painted by an adult we would say, "Wow! They're amazingly liberated
gestures".
Watching her paint it is easy to see that the stimulus for her painting comes from the sheer pleasure of mixing colors and textures to create turbulent chaotic scenes, to sparse and striking ones in an almost “caligraphic style” - Robert Nelson, art critic for “The Age” newspaper and Associate Professor at Melbourne’s Monash University.
Aelita is playful and occasionally has a willful attitude to the paints and canvas and she uses any method of applying paints and objects to the canvas: pouring, dripping, spattering, squirting, and of course brushing!
According to “The Age” critic Robert Nelson, Aelita’s paintings are “free from oppressive western traditions...”
Apart from her love of painting she enjoys gym and crafts, tinkering on the piano and singing. She loves to watch “Baby Einstein”, “French for Kids” as well as BBC ‘Eyewitness’ documentaries about the cosmos, animals and the oceans. She loves “My Little Pony”.
She speaks Russian and English but mostly Russian which both parents encourage, since she will learn English when she starts school anyway. Her Grandfather Victor is a painter too and he supports and encourages her painting when she is with him. She loves chocolate and baby-chino’s.
STYLE
Aelita’s style is reminiscent of Mark Tobey’s “Canticle” specifically, as well as broadly the pioneering ‘accidentalist’ work of Andre Masson (who influenced Pollock) and the accidentalist movement. Masson used lack of sleep, deprivation of food and also the use of drugs to free himself from rational control and get closer to the subconscious mind - a state in which children ‘naturally’ operate in without the requirement of drugs, alcohol and sleep/food deprivation. In other words for children, as in Aelita’ case, this is the normal and natural mode of operation.