Conversation With The Sage (2025) Original Oil Painting by Irina Smirnova-Seymour

This contemporary figurative painting brings a man and a bird together in a quiet, almost mystical dialogue, turning their encounter into a philosophical painting about wisdom, trust, and an inner search. The intense red, simplified forms, and expressive texture give the work the character of contemporary art, where human and nature, expressive painting, and allegory become part of a single image.

For me, the sage is not so much a particular person as a state of mind — the ability to stop, listen, and notice what usually remains unseen. The bird seems to bring him a message from another, more ancient world — a world of nature, intuition, and knowledge that cannot be learned from books. Their conversation takes place without words. It is a moment of inner silence, when a person stops searching for a ready-made answer and begins to hear it within.

I wanted to leave space for the viewer’s own interpretation: which of them is truly the sage — the man or the bird?

Materials used:

Oil paints

Details:

• Oil painting on Canvas
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 51 x 76 x 2cm (unframed) / 51 x 76cm (actual image size)
• Signed on the front
• Style: Impressionistic
• Subject: People and portraits