Angelika Privalikhina's paintings attract us through unhurried and admiring contemplation of the world, that is so rare for contemporary art. Each of her paintings from life awakens figurative imagination whose boundaries are limited only by the individual perceptiveness of the beholder. One person would see just mere interior decoration in flowers, porcelain vases, vintage perfume bottles and charming knickknacks left on a dressing table, while for another person they would mean immersion into an unexplored artistic mystery.
Her still lives depict a world filled with life and joy. The scarce items appear to have been brought together by chance, yet, one can constantly feel the caring hand that arranged the flowers thoughtfully and delicately touched everything that is now depicted on the canvas. Contemplation is the first step to introduction to beauty, a rare and today almost lost pleasure that only few of us can indulge in today. Only artists and ascetics, which are two similar categories, can indulge in it today. Art requires devotion, because it depends on the state of mind.
And nature revives mind better than anything else. It is the source of everything - colours, emotions, undertones, drama and poetics. In other words, it is inspiration. These are not mere landscapes recording in the memory the images of nice places. These are narrations about the sea and rocks, fields and the sky, narrows streets and homely squares, shared by a smitten traveler. Landscapes are, perhaps, the most passionate among Angelika Privalikhina's works, as they feature compositional, perspective and format variety. The brush strokes are free and unrestrained there. Each new theme dictates its own manner and sets a new artistic task whose plastic interpretation is inseparably associated with coloristic pattern.
People are rarely depicted in these paintings. The author seems to be endeavoring to understand the hidden genius loci that manifests itself more clearly in the absence of man. It is this endeavor that transforms each landscape into a unique image combining space, air, unique colours and textures. Almost always they convey the instability and volatility of this world, its intangibility and fragility. Nature is definitely animate for the artist and sometimes found in the most unexpected emotional states. Its beauty lies in this volatility and variation.
The artist perceives the beauty of her female portrait sitters differently, and many of these portraits could be seen as fancy dress portraits. As a rule, the artist is quite familiar with the models, and the dress here serves as a way of image detachment and refinement from routine associations. These portraits create their own world that is above time and passions, so their heroines appear to be tacit and pensively contemplative. The artist reveals the theme of beauty and its permanent intrinsic value through various female images, where gentleness of the childhood, delicacy and uniqueness of youth and fine spice of maturity rule. Captured on canvas, it loses its volatility and randomness of traits. Recreated by means of artistic language and placed within certain settings, beauty becomes something bigger than just evidence of its existence. It became a miracle, as secret as the art of painting is.
These portraits especially clearly reveal the creative foci of the artist and the consonant artistic traditions. Primarily, this is the heritage of the impressionism, yet not its French version, but its more diverse and plastically pure perception by other European schools. Ignacio Zuloaga, Joaquín Sorolla, Antonio Mancini, John Sargent - here is a fragment of the list of masters who helped the development of Angelika Privalikhina's own artistic language featuring focus on clear and reverberant colours, linear plasticity and emotional texture through profound study of their art. Neither should we forget such outstanding Russian colourists as Vasily Surikov and Nickolay Feshin, who made an invaluable contribution to the renewal of Russian painting and revealed its new infinite horizons.

However, apart from traditional painting genres, where Angelika Privalikhina is successful and fruitful, her art includes a special theme that develops gradually, like a mysterious revelation. It unites her works related to religious or Bible topics. Most of these paintings were created spontaneously. Among these are, for example, the paintings of Jerusalem or landscape paintings "The Sea Galilee" and "The Land of Christ", that the author has not been able to see with her own eyes, but imagines so vividly and convincingly, that it has been embodies in her paintings.
The beautifully conceived image of Sophia Palaiologina, a Byzantine princess and wife of Russian Grand Prince Ivan III. Dozing off in a tall chair against a background of Greek icons, the young woman is perceived as an embodiment of terrestrial standard of beauty and virtue. The dream motif confers the necessary detachment to the image, eliminates immediate contact between the figure and the beholder and creates the feeling of intimate contemplation, as if we were afraid of disturbing her sleep. Only the sorrowful image of Our Lady looking straight at us and the crimson attire of the angels disturb this serenity, reminding us of the future outstanding role of this young woman in Russian history.
The paintings of Our Lady and angels are especially expressive. The artist offers autonomous interpretation of these images that is free of any artistic traditions. So, "The Annunciation" depicts Virgin Mary as a young girl that takes admission to the history of the entire humanity with concentrated devotion. The deep, warm and pulsing crimson colour filling the entire canvas and transforming into a palpitating living and generating substance lit by the gold of Divine shine, plays the key role image creation.
However, the image of Archangel Gabriel, the bearer of the good news, is of no lesser interest. His clear gaze and gently ruling motion are focused directly on the beholder. We can feel his ethereal gait and the natural wide spread of his wings, and involuntarily we begin to feel the delicate fragrance of lilies in the air. This time the good news he brought is not only for Virgin Mary, but for each of us, and each of us perceives it in his own manner, and there is no doubt about one thing - its the news of Love.
Through contemplation, inspiration and beauty Angelika Privalikhina ascends towards love in her art and guides her audience, no matter where it is - Russia, Europe or America. Her art is clear without translation, since the key motif of her art is the secret of art perceived through media, which is a universal language.