SONIA MELNIKOVA FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY

Sonia Melnikova was born and trained as an artist and architect in Moscow. She attended the Moscow City Art School at the Academy of Arts of the USSR and graduated from the prestigious Moscow State Architectural Institute. She has worked as an architect, graphic artist, exhibit curator, and interior designer in Moscow and, since 1987, in San Francisco. Her artworks in various media have been exhibited in art salons in Moscow and art galleries and The Jewish Museum in San Francisco and the Bay Area. Her latest works as a fine-art photographer are being exhibited at San Francisco Women Artists Gallery and Expressions Gallery in Berkeley.

The artist's current medium is digital photography, but her training and “inner eye” as a painter and architect show throughout her works, which have an uncanny resemblance of painted media. Her portfolio is comprised of several extensive series, including, among others, CONCRETE ART, RUSTY THINGS, GARAGE SALE, GHOST TOWNS, STILL LIFES ON SAND, and BOTTLED PAST, the central theme of which is often a nostalgic reflection on things of the past. Their message is that real worth is not necessarily in the preciousness of the material or conventional attractiveness of things, and that beauty and artistic ideas can be found even in a pile of trash, a fragment of a decaying wall, a rusty fence, or broken stairs.

“Sonia Melnikova's art seems to float on some poetic altitude of dissolution and phantom images of the past,” — Valery and Rimma Gerlovin, conceptual artists, New York

All works are signed individually produced original high-resolution archival-quality photographs printed using state-of-the-art Epson technology on paper or canvas. The artist avoids mass-producing her work but creates a limited number of pieces, often one-of-a-kind, while maintaining full control of the quality of each individual artwork. Most of her photographic images can be printed in various sizes up to 48 inches, giving the artist the ability to customize her prints for a specific client.