A Bluish night's Insomnia by Iliana Dokova

Artwork Description

Iliana’s expressive nude paintings are the core essence of her artistic life. Very emotional, sensual and tender, she loves to paint nude women figures. She describes the process of painting as very unique for her. She starts a painting and does not stop until it is finished.

She has some art ardour and passion for her paintings and sits for many hours until the final stroke of the painting touches the canvas. She expresses her feminine side, her soul and always has some strong feelings when she starts a painting. Her paintings are very sensual and even sexual.

Iliana embraces the night to create her figures, born from all of the sensual emotions a woman can imagine. She cannot make art on commission, but only out of her soul and body.

Unable to sleep, Iliana workes nocturnally in her small atelier. There, she creates ambitious, primal, emotive, and gestural works reflecting her abandonment of bold color for muted hues of white and blue.

As many contemporary artists, Iliana's artistic creativity has long been associated with bad sleep. Insomnia was a hallmark of the mythologized suffering, bohemian artist working in the dead of night. Marcel Proust wrote much of Remembrance of Things Past (or In Search of Lost Time) in the early hours of the morning. The liminal state of consciousness between sleep and waking was one of the book’s main themes. If we look at the art history, we will see that there are many great contemporary artists, whose artistic path has been marked with Insomnia.

The French author Colette agreed, saying that “insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge.” And Vladimir Nabokov, another famous night creature, once commented that “sleep is the most moronic eternity in the world.”