Alfiaya Ponomarenko was born in 1965 in Engels, Saratov Oblast. She went to a draw hobby group at the local Pioneers' Palace and then studied at the Art School in Engels. She was dreaming to become a ballerina, but the providence changed her life. Her final decision was to become an artist and since 1980 till 1984 she studied in Saratov Art College. There are different artists among her favorites such as S.K. Taratukhin, V.S. Uspensky, L.P. Babushkina and V.À. Shkunova. They inculcated all the skills that later on proved useful to her. Alfiaya is grateful to all of them for their exacting professional severity and their kindness.

Her first experience in the world of adults was very rigorous. She has been doing some simple designing for Art Fund, replicating faceless faces of Politburo C.P.S.U members, bearing cavils from a lustful local official with a suitable surname who was banished to Saratov Art Fund, standing fellows' and Art Committee members' rudeness, she was astonished at their indifference or just blind biliousness.

But there are good people in this world. At that time Evgeny Zhelnov, a talented painter, a graphic artist and a real professional who was thrown off by the same surroundings into the designing sphere, was working in Saratov. Nowadays, in times of commercial relations he would probably be highly valued but it was different at the time of ideological attitudes to arts.

Sympathizing with a young artist it was he who became her mentor for some time. As we say, Zhelnov "trained her eye", helped her to develop visual acuity and strengthened her vigilance and hand painting skills.

Totalitarian power collapse caused new problems. Having lost the State patronage, artists became free from working to order and free from salaries as well. Market relations were forming slowly, while in provinces they are still not formed. Artists' survival depended totally on chance, on concatenation of constantly changing circumstances and on the ability to adapt themselves to the situation. Everyone had to work out his or her own algorithm of success. Alfiaya was able to find and take her niche in the society where her works are valued and taken care of. If one looks at many of her pictures at once, one will notice that she had a chain of changes in her painting techniques for a short period of time. Later on one will realize there are no stylistic metamorphoses, it is a matter of a situation for different objectives she was using different methods. It is absolutely not an eclecticism of a principle but something imposed by the order, by the necessity to follow the fashion, just by our life.

Spiritual need for harmony and peace in our life is well understood. An artist is asked to paint something mysterious and natural at the same time. Fairy dreams not everyday life images are required from the artist.

Dim and almost monochrome stylizations with time patina appear in her works, fictitious landscapes with mysterious structures reminding us medieval castles; reality and irreality are marked by the fairy and fantasy naturalism.

That is the way to satisfy nowadays requirements of a certain circle of our society to see the relics' imitations with a light touch of the erstwhile beauty and a presage of a secret.

It appears that casino walls are adorned with such pictures not by chance, for business people come to relax and forget their worries, to be absorbed with a totally different environment, getting away from everyday ado and emotional overloads. Some idyllic life of these fairy landscapes seems to be quite suitable there.

It appears that it was not that difficult for Alfiaya to paint these reminiscences in the manner of great masters. Her perception of a picture as a wall panel and her gift for design painting inhere in Alfiaya. Quite confidently she found her style in painting portraits to order. For as it was mentioned above, her ability to feel the type of a face and to grasp its specific features inhere in Alfiaya even in her college period.

She achieves an insubstantial resemblance very easily and works for the effective picture presentation, saving the image of a unique face. The quality of her portraits is very high. Her honesty in work and fantasy let her enliven the portraits of official people that prepossess the customers as well as the depicted ones.

The canvases that materialize her aspiration and break away from the common perception of life let us enter the world of arbitrary and subjective associations, fanciful visions and feelings, represent another part of her creative work. Painting art, produced by intuitive-emotional impulses not by the cold speculations, is entirely metaphorical and allegorical.

The meaning of an image is not always comprehensible at once. It is a result of some personal mythology: that is why the ciphered character of an image is not perceived but strongly felt first of all. That is where the logic of subconsciousness sets free the non-real that makes us, as a poet said, "to listen the distance".

Allegoric characters that are treated by the artist with a special attention become apparent from a huge mass of luminiferous color, at times they give rise to sudden and unpredictable associations accordant to some enigmatic mystic world.

Alfiaya is very much concerned about her fanciful visions and fantasies materialization. Lacking apparent logic they meanwhile find their audience and custom, and the artist herself seems to value these canvases most of all.

In some aspects numerous images of flowers are opposed to these fantasies but at times they have something in common. These are not still lives in common sense. Not only because she paints only natural flowers full of life, anxious and breathing.

She had never been painting still lives of relics as well as "kitchen" still lives. You will never find pictures with flowers in a basket for they are always fresh. Her flowers are always glimmering in lights and full of colorful plays. Stems' and flowers' elastic and fanciful plasticity are always vivid. Even the mannered presentation of flowers' plasticity and tangibility does not change the perception of this miracle of life.

Usually she paints from nature, showing the organic flower's structure. She is trying to reach the highest possible color accuracy in painting, achieving the originality of tulips or irises. These images witness to the artist's skills and a necessary quantity of restrain.

The color is emotionally active in her images. It bears the artist's bust of emotions and she is not afraid to give vent to its image-bearing energy, represented by flame-colored tulips blazing and luminiferous irises' brilliance.

Her relaxed manner in painting festive bouquets, color integrity of her canvases, convincing flowers' images that are penetrated by real and unreal lights are the guarantees of her future achievements.

These canvases are flatbed and decorative. The image does not break a canvas space. Color lightness and intangibility, airy pellucid colors conditioned by the dynamism of her pictures, remind us about batics' color harmony that Alfiaya used to be enthusiastic about.

Being a sensible artist by her nature she should realize that her real aim of life is not vague allegories and metaphors but the revelation of the associative coloring potential, hidden symbolism manifestation, concealing in color plasticity of flower or fruit images, in the eternal motion that is lurked in its delicate and easily ruined form, in the natural play of primary powers of life. A deserved aim of an artist is to see the sky in a flower bell.