About the Artist

Alek Buzhaker is a Twin Cities painter dedicated to the genre of still life. Born in Simferopol, Crimea, in 1947 and raised in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, he studied at the renowned Mukhina College of Art and Design, graduating in 1971.

In 1978, Buzhaker and his family emigrated to the United States. He spent many years working in graphic design and advertising before returning to traditional painting, his first love. Working in oil, he now devotes himself fully to still life, transforming everyday objects through a sensitive attention to form, color, and illumination.

His paintings were featured in the 2022 solo exhibition The Art of Still Life at The Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis. Buzhaker lives and works in the Twin Cities, where daily surroundings continue to inspire his practice. Through patient observation and a deep understanding of light, he creates luminous compositions that encourage viewers to look closely and rediscover the extraordinary within the familiar.

About the Exhibition

Still life surrounds us every day—flowers and fruit, glass and ceramics, fabric and metal. We often pass these objects without truly seeing them. In Alek Buzhaker’s paintings, their harmony, texture, and color come into focus, inviting us to notice the beauty already present in the ordinary.

Above all, Buzhaker is a painter of light. Light gives objects weight, roundness, and life: the gleam on glass, the bloom of fruit, the glow along a fold of cloth. In each canvas, he balances light and shadow, bringing familiar subjects into vivid, tangible space.

Buzhaker draws inspiration from the Dutch and Flemish painters of the 17th-century Golden Age, especially Rembrandt, whose mastery of light and shadow has shaped his vision. His work continues this tradition through close observation.