Iskren Semkov was born in 1984 in Oryahovo, Bulgaria. Between 2003 and 2009 he studied Fine Arts Pedagogy at Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski". In 2010 he was invited from the Cultural ministry of Austria for an Artist-in-Residence program in Vienna. He has several solo exhibitions in Bulgaria, Austria and Switzerland and has participated in multiple group exhibitions in Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, Taiwan, USA. He was drawn by the brush and the paint during his childhood when he participated in local juvenile painting contests and exhibitions. In his artistic journey, Iskren was also attracted by graffiti art which has more or less reflected on his works today. Iskren's paintings represent personal stories based on memories and impressions, bent through the artist’s imagination and reproduced in delicate compositions. His contemporary realism is influenced by the old masters’ techniques mixed with ideas bearing the spirit of today.
Currently Iskren Semkov lives and works in Versoix, Canton Geneva, Switzerland.
For me the process of painting is an attempt to integrate elements that reside in my mind into a sort of visual poem. My appreciation of the great masters has inspired the technique that I use. It is called “Trompe-l’oeil”, which comes from French and means “trick the eye” and is an art technique, involving realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects appear in three dimensions, instead of actually being a two-dimensional painting. I try to remove the border between imagination and reality. I do not cease seeking and depicting beauty, attracted by various art tendencies. I am impressed by nature, objects that keep history or bring memories, or just things that we see daily around us, but we neglect in our hectic lives…
