Ani Rangelova - Anira

My story

I was born on November 4, 1959 in the Eastern Rhodope Mountains. A place with life-giving energy and extremely kind-hearted people.
This place is still the most amazing to me, despite I lived there only until I was 12 years old.
I have been painting since I was a child. I drew with pencil on paper. I drew portraits of children and adults who posed for me in the garden next to us in Plovdiv, where we then moved.
I stopped drawing when I became a student in Sofia. I just didn't have time enough.
I got married, came to stay in Sofia and I had not any time for drawing yet.
Work, children, rush, everyday life.
In 1994, I founded my second company, Advertising Agency Vivati.
I established the company to return to art. In the beginning, the idea was to be a graphic design studio.

The Family

My essential reality

My first and foremost reality is my family.
My children and my grandchildren. They are my Ikigai.
They are what make me smile when I wake up in the morning.

The Company

My parallel reality

In 1994, I put the milestone by establishing my Advertising Agency Vivati. This is my third child. Fortunately, to me this child proved to be quite resistant to time and worldly transformations, and it has continued to develop very successfully for 30 years now. May this continue for at least another 30 years.

I haven't had time to draw for many years.

The return....

I returned to draw around the age of 45.
It was an interesting ‘home-coming’. Very colourful. Out of standard.
I started painting on glass. I decorated glass bottles. I painted hundreds of bottles until I just realized it wasn't enough to me.
One morning I just left all the painted bottles next to the litter-bin. No one left by noon.
And then my love affair with oil paints began, by which I still paint. I have painted many pictures. Many of them were given as gifts or sold. They decorate homes where they bring joy.
My style has visibly changed for 2 years. Acrylic with all its magnificence entered my works, and gave it colour and significance.

The painting

My fantasy reality

Around 2005, I returned actively to my love, painting. This is my Logo therapy. This is what makes me feel complete. And this is the way I am until now. I continue to paint almost every day. Family, Company and Painting find their intersection by expressing fantasy and reality in my paintings.

Glass

My feeling for what I paint...

Glass once again returned to my works, opening up my spirituality place by giving more than one matter act, this time by replacing the canvas.
Now I love everything I have painted and what I am painting. This was not always the case. From the distance of the years, however, I see the beauty in each picture I have created, and the more time passes, the more blessed I am with everything that comes out of my hands.
I have painted for many years only with oil paints and...I piled up the pictures at home.
In 2022, I started painting with acrylic to escape the sadness that my oil pictures radiated. I have painted for about a year with acrylic paints, then I started experimenting by mixing different types of paints.
I like this very much because it gives the opportunity to do things that would be difficult to achieve with just one media.
By the end of 2022 and 2023, I also started painting on acrylic and tempered glass.
I returned to the glass, but on a different level.
It seems I have some lasting feeling about glass, about its fabulous expressiveness and possibility for techniques combination.
At the moment I am painting on tempered glass, on canvas with acrylic and on canvas with oil depending on the mood I am in.