Smidse

Leonov, Pavel

Leonov calls his paintings ‘constructions’. He draws a grid of vertical columns and horizontal beams on the jute canvases. The segments he calls TV-sets. He composes a narrative field of images, a rhythm of separated scenes of different sizes. Depth is created through planes, parallel to the surface of the image. He depicts friezes with processions of trains, carriages, buses, boats, birds, animals. He mostly paints fir trees as colums, as theatre stage props. Sometimes -like in this Smithy- he paints picturesque frames of butterflies and petals.
He uses radical combination of large masses of local colour, resulting in a festive mood. He combines a coarse brushwork for the scenes and a refined painting style for his figures, slightly distorted and with rigid pearl-coloured faces.