BIO: Pavel Korshun: the path to oneself through nature
My name is Pavel Korshun. I am a plein air artist from the Smolensk countryside. My story is a story of return.
My passion for painting, which I have had since childhood, temporarily gave way to graphic design. I worked with digital formats for over ten years until I realized that I found true resonance not on the screen, but in the living, breathing nature of my native land.
In 2020, I opened a home studio and began a deep, almost meditative immersion in color and tone. Through abstract canvases, I sought inner peace and my own visual language.
The turning point came in 2023, when I got my first sketchbook. From that day on, my creativity went beyond the walls of the studio — straight into the field, to the river, under the open sky. Plein air painting became a revelation for me: there is no room for long deliberations and perfectionism here. In quick, bold sketches, the pure energy of the moment bubbles over, where emotion and mood are more important than detail. It is a dialogue with nature at the speed of life.
Today, I only paint from life. Each of my works is not just a landscape, but a preserved state, a fleeting impression, a particle of that very path to self-knowledge that I continue with each new trip.
Artist Statement: Pavel Korshun
My practice focuses on exploring the instantaneous and authentic response to nature. I work exclusively en plein air, using the technique of quick sketching as my primary method. I am not interested in a detailed representation of the landscape, but rather in conveying its momentary state—the energy of light, air, and mood. Rejecting perfectionism in favor of the emotional liveliness of the brushstroke is a key principle.
Having traveled the path from digital design to intimate abstract explorations of tone and color, I came to plein air painting as a form of artistic and personal asceticism. It is a practice of total presence. The sketchbook became a tool for “recording” pure impressions before they were overshadowed by analysis. My works are visual diary entries, materialized moments of continuous dialogue with the surrounding world.
I work with oil on cardboard or small and medium-sized canvas, which is dictated by the conditions of rapid work on location. The color palette is born from observing tonal relationships in nature, and bold, sometimes rough brushstrokes capture the immediacy of perception.
Through my sketches, I strive to preserve and convey to the viewer the primary, emotional experience of encountering a landscape that arises before its comprehension—the authentic “vibration of the place.”
”In quick, bold sketches, the pure energy of the moment bubbles over, where emotion and mood are more important than detail. It is a dialogue with nature at the speed of life.”