Maria Kononov is a child prodigy of the millennial art generation. Born in 1997 in New Jersey, USA, Maria’s creative spirit urged her to lay hands on paper and pencil and to start drawing at the age of three. Needless to mention that at an age when other children do not even know how to hold a pencil in their hand, Maria managed to draw and then cut-out from paper, shapes of dogs and horses to play with. Her talent could not go unnoticed, and soon, the children from her kindergarten began queuing up, asking Maria for drawings of their favourite animals.
The step from pencil to watercolour was short, and Maria started painting without any formal guidance. After different stages of experimentation with techniques, colours and types of paper, the transition to painting on canvas was a natural step, arising from a call to Maria’s true destiny. The works of Maria’s artistic beginnings focus on the animals as the central theme. The colours are vivid, with a strong visual impact, and the shapes illustrate the innocence of the child Maria in the vision projected on the canvas. Dogs, horses, scenes from different moments of the seasons loaded with typical games of childhood, all fill the art of this rare talent, managing to convey the same joy to the viewers.
As she matures, Maria’s creations get the contours of a young adult, who discovers the surrounding world, and begins to physically transpose on canvas her own beliefs and visions, almost as if the pieces of her growing personality takes shape in each painting. It is a rare privilege to take part in the exhibition of an eight-year-old artist, the age when Maria Kononov exhibited her art for the first time in Brussels. The talented young Maria has an impressive list of awards and exhibitions, all the more extraordinary given the fact that she is only 22 years old. From 2007 to 2012, we can trace her original art to Belgium, Russia, England, Australia, France, Germany, Austria or Italy.
But she does not limit herself to one passion. Maria is involved with the world of fashion design, illustrations and sculpture, computer graphics, and a special personal project: Life Stimulus. The latter was inspired by her grandfather Vladimir Naidin, who used to hang her paintings in the hospital where he worked as a doctor. Seeing how these paintings were lifting the spirits of even the most hopeless people, gave her this brilliant idea: to guide the children from the hospital through painting, and then gather their creations and frame them into a single piece that would adorn the hospital’s walls.
Her talent is so great and promising, that the Majid Foundation from Switzerland took her under its wing just like they do with young artists who need guidance. The Majid Foundation is founded on the principle of offering the opportunity to young people so that they can express their passion, originality and creation, true to themselves. The words are useless when it comes to an artist as promising as Maria Kononov. All we have to do is wait for her to reveal herself to us, little by little, through her everlasting creations.
Enjoy even more @ Maria Kononov
by Claudia Ciclovan