For me, creative work is the way to know myself. Painting is the language I speak to the World.
Artist Maria Mariarty (creative alias of Maria Kulikova) works in the genre of symbolic surrealism.
Maria Kulikova was born on March 06, 1982, in Sverdlovsk (Russia).
In 2006, she graduated the Ural Academy of Architecture and Art and got her master degree in architecture. For many years, she implemented her creative potential in architecture. All that time, painting was her favorite hobby. In 2023, Maria decided to turn her hobby into her core occupation. Currently she lives and works in Ekaterinburg, Russia.
Maria creates her Universe, a fantastic and surrealistic world inhabited by unique characters of her own design — enigmatic Fair Maids. Her characters attract the viewers by their delicacy and fragility, slight androgyny and cute elfin ears.
In her creative work, Maria studies the «mechanics» of generation and transfer of emotions from one creature to the other, shows the moment when an impulse is born, comprehends the ways of its transfer. It is not by chance that the artist endows her mysterious Maids with long, delicate hands. According to the author, tenderness lives «at the fingertips», on the most sensitive upper skin layer. The touch between the characters as an inseparable and recognizable detail of all Maria’s works accentuates the symbolism and reverence of the moment of emotion genesis and transfer. Closed eyes of the main characters symbolize their engrossment and concentration upon their own sensations. That way, viewers, too, are prompted to listen to themselves.
2024 Online exhibition «Strange/Unvalued»
2024 Exhibition «Feel It» within the project «The Museum Night», Ekaterinburg, Russia
2024 Exhibition of Urals artists «And spring forever!», the Museum of Architecture and Design of the Urals State University of Architecture and Art, Ekaterinburg, Russia
2023 All-Russia Arts Fair «Art Ekaterinburg», Ekaterinburg, Russia
The Atom of a Creature
Acrylic on canvas, D60 cm, 2024
The Keys to the Tenderness
Acrylic on canvas, 60x60 cm, 2024
The Shimmering of Silence
Acrylic on canvas, D60 cm, 2024
The Light Side of the Moon, the Tender Side of the Sun
Acrylic on canvas, 60x60 cm, 2024
The Dream Catchers
Acrylic on canvas, 40x40 cm, 2024
The Mechanics of Tenderness in the Analog World
Acrylic on canvas, 80x80 cm, 2024
Seven Seconds Later
Acrylic on canvas, D60 cm, 2024
The Trinity
Acrylic on canvas, 60x60 cm, 2023
The Creation of the World
Acrylic on canvas, D60 cm, 2024
