Ilona Borodulina - "a mirror cannot be glanced twice."
Ilona Borodulina is an artist. But having a look at her paintings and holding a conversation with her, you find out she is also a great thinker portraying the meaning of life through her works."Nature is a great creation of an Absolute Mind," is a belief shared by many a philosopher the world over, but Ilona adds spice to this notion, distinguishing herself from the rest.
"Creation is but an interaction of lines, and everything can be depicted through artistic portrayal of these lines." Ilona says this is the primary message conveyed through her paintings.
"An artist looks at the world just as the sky looks down on the earth," she says.
It is through "lines" that Ilona portrays the infinite glory of the universe, the endless sight of the human eye and the endless power of the human mind to grasp and encompass everything around him.
"Our eyes are like the children of our souls, they are curious," says Ilona. "My eyes are cast on everything ... but time and a mirror cannot be glanced twice. They undergo changes every second," she says while staunchly believing it is only lines through which these changes can be shown.
She glorifies woman through her paintings as she believes woman is a model of a perfect creation.
Feminism is everywhere in her creative works. Women are chatting -- and about everything. Women are dancing -- and to all tunes. Women are moving -- but not just anywhere, and they share ideas about everything.
In fact, woman is everything an ideal life could expect, according to Ilona. And all this is depicted through Ilona's interaction of lines.
Even the latest of her cycle of four gigantic portraits, "Women in Movies" which is now being shown at the city's Manege exhibition hall, Ilona depicts her philosophy on the glory of feminism.
Apart from Boris Zaborov's paintings, Ilona's works have so far attracted the attention of the most visitors to the Manege hall.
An art critic hailed Ilona's paintings as being among the best. "She is a promising girl, and she's going to be the pride of Russia," said Dmitry Zagaulyaev.
Her works were not overshadowed by Zaborov's, and she considers his presence as a boost to her talent.
In fact, Zaborov served as Ilona's creative reference about twenty years ago when the latter was 10 and Zaborov had not yet fled Minsk for Paris.
Zaborov was a friend of Ilona's family by then. They recently met by chance at the exhibition hall when Zaborov developed an interest to know the author of the "Woman in Movies."
Ilona started painting when she was 14. Since then she has participated in various art exhibitions in the country and abroad. But she considers her greatest success to be the 1993 St Petersburg exhibition, which opened for her the gate to fame.