Ceramic Sculpture
Lyuba Shmakova Art
Lyuba Shmakova creates ceramic sculptures in Haifa, Israel.
Lyuba is a zoologist by profession, working at The National Institute of Oceanography in Haifa. Recently, she discovered that she is also a talanted sculptor. Attending the ceramic sculpture studio of Alex Lelchuk in Haifa, she creates vivid and realistic images of animals and plants.
With no prior art education, she intuitively catches the character of a living creature. At the same time, she manages to follow the anatomy and live features close to the original.
Lyuba is a zoologist by profession, working at The National Institute of Oceanography in Haifa. Recently, she discovered that she is also a talanted sculptor. Attending the ceramic sculpture studio of Alex Lelchuk in Haifa, she creates vivid and realistic images of animals and plants.
With no prior art education, she intuitively catches the character of a living creature. At the same time, she manages to follow the anatomy and live features close to the original.
Art pieces available now
Lyuba Smakova’s sculptures are a clear implementation of what I longed to call “intuitive sculpture”. But she hasn’t learnt it from me! At most, she “got a permission” to do it and, after my 40-mintues introduction she just started producing wonderful lively art.
Lyuba starts playing with clay, kneading, pulling and smearing large lumps of the material. It doesn’t take long. After one, five, twenty minutes you can already discern an image looking at you.
Most of the images are smiling. They definitely look at you, or maybe at somebody else, or maybe not smiling but thinking, or feeling. Anyway, they always have some emotion, even an octopus.
And this is what fascinates me in Lyuba’s works: they are absolutely not anthropomorphic, though they relate a clearly human emotion. They look very like real animals showing exceptional observation skills and knowledge of anatomy, but still they are very intuitive and impressionistic.
Lyuba starts playing with clay, kneading, pulling and smearing large lumps of the material. It doesn’t take long. After one, five, twenty minutes you can already discern an image looking at you.
Most of the images are smiling. They definitely look at you, or maybe at somebody else, or maybe not smiling but thinking, or feeling. Anyway, they always have some emotion, even an octopus.
And this is what fascinates me in Lyuba’s works: they are absolutely not anthropomorphic, though they relate a clearly human emotion. They look very like real animals showing exceptional observation skills and knowledge of anatomy, but still they are very intuitive and impressionistic.
