VRUBEL, 60X24" Gypsy Girl HAMLET, 36X60" GRIEF, 48X48", Currently showing at the Triton Museum, Santa Clara, CA

TWILIGHT, 12X16" POINT LOBOS, 24X30" DAVID BOWIE, 40X40" GEORGE, 20X20"

FEMALE PORTRAIT, 12X16" At the Easel Boris Tyomkin

Russian Symbolism

The work of Boris Tyomkin continues the Russian Symbolist quest for expressing potent archetypes, to evoke a timeless emotional response. In his work, imagery serves to reveal and invoke yearnings accessible only below the threshold language. Tyomkin interweaves the powerful Symbolist traditions of his homeland, positioned in contemporary emotional contexts and settings.

The use of symbols in art goes back to Neolithic times and continues through all art styles, to this day. In the religion-based feudalism of the Middle Ages, where most people were illiterate, Art was the teacher and communicator. Symbols were used as a kind of shorthand, easily understood by the populace. As European civilization moved out of feudalism and into a more educated and mercantile world, wealthy upper and middle class patrons created a market for private Art.

In the 19th century, the industrial age was concerned with realism and empiricism which was reflected in their Art, but it was the advent of photography, that encouraged artists to search for different ways to go beyond "perfect" realism. Artists yearned for broader, deeper meanings; they linked sources from poetry, legend, drama and music into their artistic expressions, and the Symbolist movement was born.

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