About
Maya Korlas-Martin is an accomplished watercolor artist. She sells her work as an architectural illustrator, offers art lessons and completes private commissions for landscape and urban views and portraits. Maya Korlas paints primarily in watercolor but also draws in pen and ink. Alongside drawing, painting and teaching art, she also completes commissioned works, house portraits for example. Refer to the Gallery to see examples of these works. Refer to the Art Lessons for the details of the art classes and masterclass in watercolor in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Maya most often creates her urban sketches and watercolour paintings within the urban surroundings of the city, but also works indoors in a studio surrounding. In the studio she finishes paintings initially started in the lively surroundings of the city, that are so essential to the succes of a painting. Here she also works on portraits and still-life in a controlled enviroment.
She loves depicting the game of morning sunlight on delicately tinted flowers, from the set up still-life, with sweat peas and lilacs being the favorites there. Amongst the city views, recurring motifs are the old Svanemøllen power station in Copenhagen and Nikolai Kirke at Gammel Strand set against the stormy Scandinavian skies.
Her landscapes are painted combining dry and wet techniques, they primarily are drawn en plein air, that is outdoors, in French. The Metro series has been executed in architectural graphical technique, another device, where all urban details, i.e. metro entrance staircases are depicted with both drawing precision (ink and pen)and vibrant colors. The series were completed in 2018-2021 and examples of these works can be seen in Gallery.
As a trained architect and artist, Maya paints in the “alla prima“ technique, but also completes a large amount of time-consuming architectural building studies in color with construction drawing lines visible through layers of paint. In the beginning of producing a new work, she creates an architectural line drawing, and then, after saving the drawing on camera, continiues by painting upon it.
Maya says: “I take one continual ninety-or-so minutes’ watercolour session to put my impressions in color on a sheet of paper.” The tricky combination of the understated wet technique and the precision of a line drawing is the crunch that makes up her individual style. Examples of this can be seen in the section with City Scapes in Gallery.
Exhibitions Udstillinger
Maya sells her work at an open exhibitons in Denmark.
Maya takes on commissions to paint portraits, landscapes or private houses. Maybe you would like to keep an artistic record of your house or have a view from your favorite nature spot painted. When undertaking portrait commissions, it often requires the model to have a sitting session in her studio, after which she continues the work from her initial sketches and photos.
If you are interested in having a work of art painted for you do not hesitate to get in touch with the Contact information below.
Qualifications
Maya Korlas-Martin is a water colour artist. Her first degree was from the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Russia. She studied under professor in Architecture Alexander Zhuk in 1988-92. She graduated from the architectural department with Master’s degree of an Architect-Artist in 1992.
After few years work as a graduate, she continued professional development and took up two years studies in Interdisciplinary Design at Cambridge University. She graduated with Master of Studies Degree in Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment. (MSt Cantab) in 2001. Her second degree led to her continued 6 year work as an architectural assistant for the residential and school design in UK . She simultaneously continued to paint watercolours and then her family moved country.
At present Maya lives in Copenhagen as her family relocated to Denmark in 2010. She started her Danish studies Danish at Studieskolen, under cand.ling. Bodil Jepersen, Copenhagen. Now Maya works as a freelance artist, but also as an Arts and Languages teacher in Russian and English.
Maya studies at present Italian at www.lofkurser.dk in Hillerød, where she works herself as a teacher of Russian language. Russian courses are taught online. Link to Russian courses is
https://lofkurser.dk/kontakt/undervisere/teacher?tid=00000000-0000-0000-0038-363036383131