Nikolay Roussev is not an ordinary person, but it is this feature that defines the completeness of his complex and strong character. He is strikingly talented artist – creator, who has participated in many exhibitions in his country and abroad; he is literally kissed by God and the one, who inspires his works helps for the creation of extraordinary works in all kinds and genres of figurative arts: landscapes, portraits, still life and monumental paintings, books illustrations and battle compositions, works of imagination and religious themes. He is young but already established artist, who paints with oil paint, aquarelle, distemper, Nikolay paints whit many materials, engraves etchings, design books, prospects and CDs. He is full of ideas and projects. What is originality of Roussev’s creative life? Whatever direction the painter turns on to, what ever genre he works on – everywhere one can see the example of devoted work to his art, the elevated idea, where the honesty of the feelings and the broadness of the soul, the good intentions and his explosive character are reflected in his canvas.

Roussev’s art? This is an open conversation with the viewer about their impressions, it is love cherished, but it is also an appeal to their sole an invitation, a call, an incarnation in the unexpected an sometimes fantastic images, a combination of the unreal and real, of the dramatic and poetic, of the material and imaginary.

Nikolay Roussev is an excellent painter, one of his kinds for modern European art. Just like Théodore Géricault, the young master is especially good at painting images of his favorite horses, dynamic and gracious, like plastic arts and where the artist’s love for heroic and romantic times of noble and brave knights and self-sacrificing rebels is hidden.

An adherent to the principle of righteous life, the artist makes it clash in his works with sin, light against dark, a battle of fantastic single combats and major battles. He is able embody it even in the full of inner tenseness strange disturbing eyes of the characters in his portraits and self-portraits. This is why Jesus, whom he has painted many times, is always tremendously suffering, but never giving up.

Prof. Dr. Vyatcheslav Babyak
Member of the International Association of Art Critics and of the Creative Union of Art Critics (AIS)
St. Petersburg, Russia

The art of MarinaVarentsova-Rousseva is similar to an intimate spiritual story. She opens herself in her works, she gradually incorporates her experience and what has been created by her talent through fine artistic images and then she directs them to the spectator. This can be seen and is characteristic for her easel formats in oil painting, camera-like, but of a different genre.

Looking at Marina’s works you could forget about the material world, as if you are looking trough a glass with transparent surface, where an amazing living face squeezed in; you can see magnificent seascapes or distant blue mountains, mysterious monasteries and picturesque village patterns. If this is a landscape – you want to step in, forgetting about material two-dimensionality of the canvas and paint, this is piece of life in itself, enclosed by a framework.

Prof. Dr. Vyatcheslav Babyak
Member of the International Association of Art Critics and of the Creative Union of Art Critics (AIS)
St. Petersburg, Russia