“Neo-symbolism is a contemporary direction in art that explores the creative potential of the symbol.”
— Volnaya
The term did not appear as an attempt to create a new art movement or to give a name to my own style. On the contrary, for many years I couldn’t fully see myself in any of the existing art movements.
My work shows the influence of symbolism, visionary art, sacred geometry, many years of making mandalas and exploring the language of images. Yet none of these definitions fully reflected what was happening in my work.
I was not looking for a new direction in art. I was looking for precise words for what had been happening in my works for many years.
Gradually, through artistic practice, through watching how symbols affect a person’s state, and through creating hundreds of works, my own understanding of the role of the symbol in art began to take shape.
At some point I came across neo-symbolism, a new direction in the work of several artists. But as I explored their work, I realised that each of them understood it in their own way. So I defined this direction for myself through my own artistic practice — and everything fell into place.
Unlike traditional symbolism, which often turned to inner conflicts, emotional turmoil, dreams, fears and the shadow sides of human nature, I explore the other side of human experience.
I am not interested in what destroys a person. I am interested in what helps them awaken, remember, create.
In neo-symbolism the symbol becomes more than a way to show what is hidden. It becomes a tool for bringing forth the inner resources, qualities and states that help a person live more wholly, consciously and fully. With the whole breadth of the soul.
That is why the focus is not on trauma, but on restoring one’s inner foundation.
Not conflict, but integration.
Not losing the connection with oneself, but returning to it.
Each work is created as a system of images, where composition, colour, rhythm, symbols and visual metaphors interact with one another and form a single space of meaning.
What matters to me is not so much what a person understands when looking at a work.
Far more important is what they begin to feel.
Which memories awaken.
Which states stir in the soul, and what the body feels.
Which inner doors open.
Neo-symbolism rests on the idea that art is a living language, able to convey meanings that can’t be put into words.
Through symbols and images a work can remind a person of their dignity, inner strength, creative nature, love, freedom, wisdom, the memory of their lineage and soul, their connection with their origins and purpose.
In this sense a painting stops being merely an object of contemplation.
It becomes a space of interaction and spiritual uplift.
A space where a person meets themselves.
We live in an age of fast-developing technology, artificial intelligence and virtual worlds. And the more external possibilities humanity gains, the more important it becomes to keep our connection with our living human nature.
Neo-symbolism was born as a response to this challenge of our time.
As an attempt to preserve the language of feeling in a world that speaks more and more in the language of data.
As a reminder that a person is not only a mind.
A person is also a heart.
Imagination.
Intuition.
Memory.
Spirit.
And the ability to create a new reality through an inner choice.
That is why, for me, neo-symbolism is not only an artistic direction.
It is an exploration of the creative principle in a human being.
Neo-symbolism doesn’t explore a person’s wound. It explores their inner source, sometimes long forgotten beneath the layers of the unconscious.
An exploration of that inner source from which love, creativity, strength of spirit, meaning and life itself are born.
And perhaps the main task of such art is not to give a person new answers, but to help them hear the answers that have always lived within them. I believe in this.