Anastasya
Martynova

Anastasya Martynova is a London-based, multidisciplinary artist who's primary focus is in painting, gilding, woodcarving and sculpture. After a long background in art direction for the BBC, she was drawn away to the world of Fine Art. Her passion for using traditional skills and craftsmanship has led her to continue to develop her own, contemporary approach to age old techniques. Her practice is rooted in storytelling and influenced by her Russian heritage. Aside from her own varied and experimental practice, Anastasya also works with MUSEEA, a curatorial design studio, as an artist and craft expert. 
The selection of submitted works are part of an ongoing series entitled “The Shape of God”, the idea of which came to Anastasya after an intense vision state she experienced in 2017, while working with a shaman. 
In this work she tries to attempt to capture the structure she saw, which is what Anastasya understood to be the essence of Creation, epitomised in form. After the initial realisation of how profound this experience was for her, she felt compelled to describe something of what she saw.At first it felt impossible to represent something that Anastasya was unable to fully fathom. It was presented to her as a colossal, vastly complex geometric form in an infinite blackness and even recalling such a thing was a daunting proposition. The thing that was clear was colour; deepest navy, turquoise and accents of gold, that highlighted the variously detailed structure.In striving to replicate that which is perfect, of course Anastasya came up against the human inability to do so, and so the game of finding balance in imperfection formed the process; a slight deviance in line or a minor miscalculation which threw the geometry just slightly off, has created her somewhat crude version of some of the elements of the fathomless whole that she saw and was in awe of.
This project is Anastasya's ongoing experiment into capturing the impossible, which she hopes in a small way, may resonate with others in its balance, playfulness and interaction with light. She sees these artworks akin to positive charges in a space, bringing in light and balance. In her work, Anastasya is interested in promoting a quiet, reflective state inside the individual as a way of realising our inner wisdom and asking the question; “where do I exist inside this story and what does god look like to me?During her vision, she was told such a task would be beyond any human to be able to undertake in a lifetime, so in a sense Anastasya see this project as an intriguing dance with risk and the impossibility and realisation of perfection. At the same time, she is also starting to realise that getting close to capturing this “form” would mean not a physical death, but the death of the ego, which unlocks the true meaning of happiness and being fully present in this life.