Change is part of the art: from real to abstract, from sculpture to painting, transience between the materials
Some of Agnessa Petrova’s monumental sculptures morph from geometric figures to fluid motion as if wind had blown through stone.
Childhood experience will have played a role in these forms. Having spent her early years in Varna on the banks of the Black Sea, as she writes in a mail, she has a fascination for waves and water at once covering the coastline but also affording a view below the surface.
Just as she enjoys working with geometric and abstract figures, the metamorphosis is an integral part of her lifestyle.
She lives with her husband (sculptor) and two children (daughter: artist, son: video film producer) in Bulgaria’s capital Sofia and likes to work in a hut in the mountains. She loves the nature around her, she writes, and that she can take her family with her in her mind.
She also likes to move from sculpting to painting and from one medium to another. Her favorite material is stone, specifically marble with its light effects on the surface. She has also produced works in wood and metal and even in transient material such as ice and snow.
Her mail reveals that change clears her mind – „if I don’t try different materials I will get bored“, she writes.
But she is grounded by her family, in the history and culture of her home, Bulgaria.
The path to art was not destiny, although her father wanted to be an artist but had become an engineer. She searched, as she says: „I wanted to discover many things by myself“.
At the age of 14 she entered Sofia’s National High School of Fine Arts and later graduated from the National Art Academy, got a pirze as best graduate of the year and closed her academic studies with a doctoral degree in Fine Arts.
Her foible for natural stone and monumental shapes originates from the fact that both „concentration and meditation“ are required: „This is necessary to control the big grinder hour after hour and to reflect about the shape.“
She was inspired and stimulated by Charles Taylor, Canadian Philosopher, and his work „The Malaise of Modernity“ 1991.
Taking part in sculpting symposia, where people of all cultures and walks of life come together and exchange ideas, has always been important for her work.
Details of her interpretation of art can be found in an issue of the SculpturesPacific Magazine (pdf).
Photos: Agnessa Petrova
(19.06.2019, USA: 06.19.2019)