Ivan Anikin

I'm a painter based in Prague. I work in oil, acrylic and pastel, and every piece begins somewhere between a dream and a question — an angel that may be falling or rising, a mountain I saw in my sleep, the last breath of sunset meeting the first of starlight. I paint the moment the light comes through the dark.

My paintings ask more than they tell. Whether an angel has fallen or risen, whether you are looking at the sun or the moon, at blood or a strawberry smoothie — that is up to you, and to what you already carry. The canvas is only half of it. The rest is what you see.

Each painting is an original: made by hand, one of a kind, impossible to repeat. I move between oil, acrylic and pastel because each holds light in its own way. Copies of select works are available for those who want to live with an image without owning the single original.

The pieces gather loosely into series — Angels, Moons, Portals, Waves — and each carries a line of its own, a small caption that belongs to the painting rather than sitting beside it as a label.

I have been making things for as long as I can remember — code as much as canvas — always curious, always building. Painting is where that curiosity turns to light. I live and work in Prague, and the studio is where all of it begins.