Marina Antonova
Illustrator merging painterly style with modern themes
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Les Escaliers began as a visual reflection on solitude and transformation. The spiral staircase became a recurring motif — a structure that is at once functional and poetic, mechanical yet organic. In these drawings, stairs entwine with trees, light bends through fog, and spaces blur the line between interior and exterior. I was drawn to the spiral’s ambiguous nature — neither fully ascending nor descending, it suggests both progress and repetition.
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Les Cafés de Nuit began as an exploration of the spaces where silence and connection coexist. The series captures moments in Paris cafés — once symbols of conversation and presence — now reimagined through the modern loneliness of blue screens and dim reflections.
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French literature seems to carry its own distinct color palette. Proust is violet — the fading twilight of memory. Camus is the white-hot sun of Algeria. Colette is bathed in gold, filled with the late-afternoon light of the Palais-Royal.
And then there’s Georges Simenon: pure, unwavering grey.
These drawings are an attempt to paint his Paris — not the one of postcards, but the Paris of mist and melancholy, of windows glowing like half-forgotten stories.
A city where figures drift through fog, cafés turn into aquariums of light, and conversations dissolve into the hum of rain.
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This series offers a look behind the scenes — the drawings, experiments, and evolving lines that later find their way into my Parisian works. The motifs, inspired by chevaux de frise (the ornamental iron spikes that guard Parisian balconies), have become a recurring visual language in my practice. Here, I explore their transformation from ink studies on paper to charcoal drawings integrated into cityscapes. Each sketch begins with fluid, plant-like gestures, then gradually acquires architectural discipline. The result is a hybrid form — part botanical, part mechanical — echoing both the elegance and the quiet defenses of the city itself. Drawn in ink, charcoal, and digital pencil on textured paper, these studies capture the rhythm of repetition and variation at the core of my process.
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In this series, I explore the emotional geometry of Parisian evenings — the tension between interior and exterior, warmth and distance. Cafés appear as sanctuaries of light, fragile and temporary. Figures dissolve into the night, half real, half reflection.
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