Denis Lavinski: A Return to His Roots Through Light and Color

This is a story about how art becomes a bridge between generations and continents. Born in America, Denis Lavinski found his way back to his roots through art filled with light and color. His works are not simply urban landscapes; they are an attempt to see beauty in happenstance, to find harmony where it usually goes unnoticed. His visit to Nesvizh became more than a solo exhibition — it was a return to his origins.

The exhibition “The House Around the Corner: Flares in the Ordinary” opens in Nesvizh

On July 18, the Mara National Art Gallery opened a solo exhibition of Denis Lavinski works. Opening the exhibition, the gallery’s director, the art historian Larisa Bortnik, noted:

“The Mara Gallery is now in its fifth year, and every exhibition we hold is a world of its own into which our visitors are drawn. Denis came to us from America, but he has never been far from Belarus, where his parents were born. His painting is thoroughly ‘Russian-speaking’ in spirit; it is the work of a man who, even in paintings depicting cities foreign to us, remains faithful to the homeland of his ancestors.”

The artist’s father, Youri Lavinski, continued the thought:

“Denis had at last come to his homeland in the most literal sense. My father grew up in Nesvizh; I was baptized here as an infant by Father Dimitry Khmel, rector of the Church of St. George; and I visited my grandmother and grandfather here every summer holiday. Despite emigration, Nesvizh has always remained my hometown.

Interestingly, in emigration we became more Russian and Belarusian than we had been while living here. Pride in our homeland and our history became the central theme in the raising of our children. My father, Professor Khristofor Lavinski, MD, DSc, always dreamed of returning to Belarus, and after retiring from the army he worked until his final days as head of a department at the Belarusian State Medical University.”

Denis’s love of art was no accident. It was instilled in him quite literally with his mother’s, Lilia, milk, who nurtured an artist in him, and genes from his grandfather, Dmitry Zhary, a military rocket scientist and a member of the Union of Artists of Russia.

Galina Lavinskaya, the elder of the family, expressed her joy that her great-nephew Denis had at last returned to the ancient soil of Nesvizh. There is a great deal of light, sun and joy in Denis’s paintings.

Ariadna, granddaughter of Larisa Bortnik and a second-year student at the Academy of Arts, is of the same view:

“My very first impression was that Denis’s manner of painting is highly unusual. I am accustomed to classical painting — not so bright, not so explosive. It is mesmerizing. It’s fascinating! Even if you are not used to such a burst of emotion on canvas, the works still draw you in by their brightness, their unordinary character, their uniqueness. One wants to stay near them longer, to see every detail, to make out what is depicted and what is hidden behind it. What is there, around that corner?!”

The artist himself, Denis Lavinski, admitted that his reception in Nesvizh had exceeded all his expectations:

“My paintings are always ‘in my heart,’ but I have never had a space as fine as the one at the Mara Gallery (Mara means “dream” in Belarusian) in which to show them together. I want to thank the organizers and everyone who helped us. Without them my dream could not have been realized. When I first walked into the hall, I was struck by how harmoniously my paintings fit into that beautiful space. The organizers certainly grasped the essence of the work.

Let me say a little about how this period in my work began. Roughly half the paintings shown here were created in Los Angeles, where I had lived since early childhood. In 2020, when the world closed because of the pandemic, I was working on film sets in Hollywood, and suddenly everything stopped. I realized that if I did not devote myself entirely to art then, I might never find the strength to do it.

I always knew that I would return to my homeland, that I would come to Belarus and to Russia. At my American school there was a teacher who used to say: “You can put certain things off, but at some point, you have to take them up yourself.” And so, these paintings were born. Later I found a way to bring California and our motherland together in my work.”

California sun and a return to roots

Denis Lavinski on the city, nature, color, and coming back to his roots.

— Your paintings are often called urban landscapes. And yet there is so much nature in them…

— They are more about the unexpected ways nature and the city collide. “The house around the corner,” with a tree or simply a shrub growing in front of it, is not a park at Versailles where everything has been thought through to the last detail. The charm lies in the accidental: your neighbor happens to have a bush like that, and the shadow happens to fall just so. My main task is to show how nature lives its own life in our courtyards and our cities.

— How and where do you find your subjects?

— It all begins with a photograph. I simply walk around and click, click, click. You can pass the same house a hundred times and notice nothing, and on the hundred and first you see it. The exhibition includes works from Los Angeles, New York, Mexico City, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Tbilisi. It was specifically for this exhibition that I began the Belarusian chapter of my work. My first painting is of my great-grandfather, Vasily Mikhailovski, on a motorcycle, painted from a photograph taken in 1962.

— Why him in particular?

— It’s a surprise — a gift for my father. I grew up in Southern California and lived in Los Angeles for nearly ten years after university, and it was very important to me to show the city I love. But I could not remain faithful to one place alone: I found beauty in other cities and countries I visited and lived in.

— Your colors are very vivid. Where does that come from? Life itself doesn’t look like that at all…

— It must be the California sun and its influence. Believe me, I even tried to trick myself! A few years ago, I began painting night scenes to “damp down” the colors. I thought: “Now there will be dark tones, more brown, more dark background.” It didn’t work — at night the colors turned out just as bright, only more contrasting. Shadows thrown by headlights, the cold light of a security camera outside a house, streetlamps — all of it intersects. But if one looks attentively, any city at night is exactly like that.

— Are you an optimist in life?

— On the whole, yes. I have always considered myself a cheerful, kind person. I try to be open. I suppose that is what comes through in the color.

— Is this your first time in Nesvizh?

— Yes, this is my first trip to Belarus. This is my father’s homeland; my grandfathers and great-grandfathers lived here. My grandfather Khristofor was born here in 1940. My father passed on to me his vivid childhood memories connected with Belarus: he was born here and visited every year until emigrating to America, and even afterward he managed to come, though not as often.

— And what do you feel yourself to be? A Belarusian, an American, a Pole?

— We are Soviet people, in the good sense of the word. In me the roots of ancestors from Russia and Ukraine, from Belarus and Poland are all interwoven. That does not divide — it unites.

— What struck you most in Nesvizh?

— I had often heard about the town from my father; I knew from his stories about its ancient history, about the castle, about the spirit of this historic place and its people. But to see it all with my own eyes… This should have been done long ago — and now the return to the motherland, to my origins, has finally taken place. I am very glad to be here at last.

— You have been living in St. Petersburg for three years. Why did you decide to move?

— As you know, I was born and raised in the United States and studied in England, but I never lost my connection to the Russian language and culture. From the age of five to eighteen I served as an altar boy at the parish of St. John of Kronstadt of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. My sister and I took part in Russian scouting organizations. And after university, some ten years ago, I began thinking about moving. I wanted to live in a setting where my native culture and language surrounded me completely. Three years ago, my dream came true — I moved to St. Petersburg, the city where my grandfather Khristofor and my father lived, studied and worked.

— Your Russian is very good.

— In our family we have always spoken Russian, and we still do. I did not know English until I started first grade. I can say that my love of the Russian language was one of the reasons for the move.

Youri Lavinski: “We only helped him find himself”

We put a question to Denis’s father: “How do you raise a true artist?” He answered:

“A natural gift is only a spark. Fortunately, we managed not to suppress it but to fan it into a flame. An enormous share of the credit belongs to his mother, Lilia. She instilled in Denis a love of beauty and of the act of creating. My own part was one thing only — to support his wish to give himself to art entirely, without scattering his energies. That was not easy. He was always searching for himself, moving restlessly between styles. There were moments when he had to be persuaded that if you cannot earn a living with a brush today, it does not mean you should abandon your calling. Time passed, and Denis understood: work, work and more work is the only path of a master.

At home I keep a large collection of his early paintings and drawings. Looking through them, you can see how his hand changed. It is an endless search: abstraction gave way to impressionism, to realism and to other styles. But the works I hold especially dear are the ones he painted later — scenes from everyday life. People in a subway train, passengers at an airport, a priest blessing parishioners with Holy water… There is an astonishing truth of life in them. In the apparent bustle of the crowd, he was able to make out each person individually, with his own story and his own feelings.

Speaking of roots, one cannot fail to mention his grandfather on his mother’s side, Dmitry Zhary. His was a remarkable life: a member of the Union of Artists of Russia, and by his main profession a military rocket engineer. He traveled the whole of the Soviet Union, and wherever his service took him — to Siberia, to the Far East — he always took his watercolors along. Drawing was his passion, a way of preserving his impressions of the beauty he saw on his postings. Today those works are a genuine chronicle of an era.

And then cousin Elena Kurlyanskaya and her mother — my aunt Galina — had the idea of holding an exhibition here, in our family’s hometown. Elena became the real engine of the project.

I want to give special thanks to the Nesvizh native Maria Martos, the founder of the Mara Gallery. She not only gave my son’s works a home and allowed them to blaze in all their glory but also made our stay here a genuine celebration.”

Elena Kurlyanskaya: “An exhibition on the land of our ancestors is a family celebration”

“Yes, this was my dream and my initiative. We always knew that Denis would become an artist — it is in his blood. And when Youri told me that Denis had taken up his art in earnest and already had significant works behind him, I understood: his work needed a worthy setting. Especially so since we are speaking of my nephew. I love my cousins and our large family very much. And it mattered to me that his art should be heard here, in Nesvizh.

The setting turned out to be the Mara Gallery. It is a unique place, created effectively from nothing. At first the thought was that the historic walls would be preserved and a new space fitted within them, as was once done at the Nesvizh State College. But the reality proved harsher: everything had to be pulled down, and colossal resources, expertise and emotional effort had to go into it. I care about every project that brings my hometown back to life, and Mara is a particular source of pride for me.

For me this exhibition is not simply a vernissage. It is a chance to do the thing we so badly lack amid the bustle of life: to gather everyone together. We meet in brief moments, sometimes on sorrowful occasions, when one of the family passes away. But one longs for a celebration. For a real family occasion.

I live in Minsk now, but Nesvizh is a source of strength for me. It is my native soil, and it recharges me every time I set foot on it.”

Background

Denis Lavinski is a Russian-American artist. His work is wide-ranging, but its principal theme over the past six years has been light in its various manifestations, the search for beauty in outwardly unremarkable places, and the effect of light on the emotions.

Education and career: a philologist by training (King’s College London). While studying in London he worked at a gallery; on returning to Los Angeles, he took part in various projects and worked at a design studio in Hollywood.

Geography: born in New Jersey, raised in Southern California, and three years ago moved to St. Petersburg. His art is a dialogue between cities — sunlit Los Angeles, St. Petersburg with its white nights, restless New York, ancient Tbilisi, exotic Mexico City, and now his ancestral Belarus.

Materials: he works with a special acrylic paint, Nova Color, made in California. It gives an effect of “dopamine” brightness and reflects light.

From December 2025 through January 2026, his exhibition “The Sun Forgets the Angle of Its Fall,” with 22 paintings created in Los Angeles and St. Petersburg, was shown at Terminal A in Nizhny Novgorod.

Lavinski’s works are less an exact depiction of places than a rendering of the state, rhythm and mood of light in the city.