Anna in Yakut dress

[Enzie Shahmiri]

Yup, I have been busy, that's for sure!

Sergio, I love the background behind your painting. I followed with great interest what you have been experiencing and how this painting came to be.

I had to laugh when I saw your computer set up. I need to show your keyboard placement to my family, so they once and for all stop complaining about my set up. I do have a question for you. I noticed you have taken close-up shots of your model with different skin tones. Can you tell me why you did that? Are you keying up different areas to get more color information out of the original?

I so have to take a tutorial by you how to paint eyes!

[Sergio Ostroverhy]

Hello Enzie,

The different prints are for playing with the cold warm contrast on the face. I think it is the most difficult part to obtain in a portrait. The computer is there, but basically I don't work from it if have enough prints... after a while my eyes just cannot apprehend a computer screen image as a source to resolve a problem on the portrait.
I would even say, sometimes, the worst is the photo the more interesting is it to work after it on a portrait... and clearly: no photo can replace the original model sitting for you hours and hours!

[Linda Ciallelo]

Sergio, your work and your attitude are a breath of fresh air. This is wonderful! I can tell from what you say, and from the painting, that you paint and live straight from your soul.
Amazing work.

[Sergio Ostroverhy]

Thank you Linda,

I consider that anyway it is not a matter of choice:
in order to astonish or create a feeling of "marvel" in others you have to constantly be in admiration of life yourself.
The more intensity you give to the moment, the more intense it would be your painting.
Nothing more dreadful than a boring model, with a boring attitude and an "always used" technique...
Painting is a constant challenge before your own idea of perfection, before the expectations of your surrounding and certainly a huge dose of religious belief that one day you obtain the "ultimate emotion" and like a surfer on a wave you won't leave it again.

[Linda Ciallelo]

I agree completely. If one is bored with life, his paintings will show it. Whatever your personality, your paintings will show it. I have always said that one can tell more about the artist from a painting than one can about the subject.

I worked for an ambulance service as a paramedic for several years. I know how it effects ones view of life. Right now I drive a bus for the city. This job also has similiarities to the ambulance work. One is always in the midst of humanity, especially the poor and the impaired. The buses are full of the mentally ill, the retarded, the addicted, immigrants that speak no english,and the physically disabled. They can't afford cars. It gives one lots of practice in reading faces.

[Sergio Ostroverhy]

Hello Linda again,

That bus driving experience has to be filled with astonishing faces!
How do you protect yourself from all the aggression (or positivity?)

To tell you the truth, I even dogged a secret tunnel from my apartment to my art studio, just to not meet my neighbors in the morning, in order to limit the loose of "energy" I need to start to paint!

Especially I am afraid of an old woman who was: -born in that Parisian courtyard, -was living her whole life in it and will certainly die here... I suppose... She is that old French person who knows everything about everybody, from whom even the cats are jumping away as soon as they see her. In addition in her apartment nothing changed since 50 years... NO shower of course...

So that person is just obsessing me, She lives above us and I know every movement in her flat: when she wakes up, when she goes to sleep, if she is happy (in this case she dances alone a TANGO) or she is in a bed mood (in this case she closes her window in a very loud way)... and of course she is always in her window...

and her name (you won't believe that!) is: Ms NEVER (Mademoiselle JAMAIS) which clearly indicates everything...

[Julie Deane]

This is an amazing portrait, Sergio. So very beautiful and intense!

And I love your description of your upstairs neighbor. What a picture you have painted with your words....

Linda, I feel like taking your words: "paint and live straight from your soul" and posting it on my studio wall.