Alexandra Klimas has achieved her ideal. She loved to draw even as a young child. The dream of becoming an artist remained. Her penchant was for realistic painting. Because the academies back then did not teach realistic painting, she taught herself the skills she needed to do so. In doing so, she developed her own unique style.
Throughout the years, Alexandra’s paintings have become more and more detailed. She wants to portray her animals so true to life that people feel a connection with her models. Her work can therefore be categorised as hyperrealism (also known as photo-realism or superrealism), a postmodern art movement from the 1960s and 1970s. Contemporary hyperrealism is not an exact copy of a photograph. The subject can never be photographed in such a way and can never be viewed as such in real life. Alexandra Klimas’s work always balances between photograph and reality.
Alexandra: “I use photographs to study details and make many sketches of the animal before painting it. A photograph is just a snapshot. It doesn’t show you the animal’s unique personality. As a result, my sketchbooks are full of short pieces of text describing the animal’s personality, which I sketch during my visits to the farm. I work it all out later on at my atelier.”
Koe Evi, oil on canvas, 80 x 60 cm, © 2009 Alexandra Klimas
