Alexander Zavarin is a painter currently living and working in Moscow.
Zavarin often works in a highly textural style, with thick paint application and physical textures contributing to the overall look and appeal of his paintings. It looks as though much is done with painting knives, but I don’t actually have any information about his process.
At times, he moves toward the non-representational, but doesn’t quite step over that line, with large rough edged shapes and blocks of color still resolving into recognizable objects. At other times, he moves toward the more straightforwardly representational, and into Tonalist territory.
His still life paintings are notable not only for their forceful use of texture, but for his application of color in a way that is similar to the atmospheric effects normally applied to landscape.
You can view the galleries on his website by category. In the “Miscellaneous category, you’ll find works that feature stylized figures and often have a narrative component; whether they were intended as illustrations, I don’t know.
I prefer to browse through by the general category of “Painting“, viewing a mix of his subjects and styles.
As much as I enjoy his use of color and texture, it’s Zavarin’s varied use of edges I find most interesting, from broken and scumbled to softly feathered, sometimes sharp and sometimes “lost”, giving his compositions an appealing sense of unity and harmony.
