Mila Arbuzova spent her childhood in the downtown of Saint Petersburg. Her family lived in a block of flats in Grazhdanskaya Street where, according to Dostoevsky’s famous novel “Crime and Punishment”, the old female moneylender killed by Rodion Raskolnikov used to live. In Soviet times guides often showed foreigners the place where the legendary murder occurred. Maybe this location of the native house made an influence on the future artist. The art work of Mila Arbuzova is essentially  “Saint-Petersburg’s”: lyrical, strict, sometimes - tragicomocal, philosophical, serious and absurdist in the same moment. It includes a wide range  of subjects: the sarcastic sketches in the spirit of "social art" as well as the magical  fantastic pictures together with free compositions combining parts of realistic images in a surrealistic manner.

Contemporary Russian Art despite its visual diversity tends to simplify so that its painting mainstream is becoming more and more schematic and conditional due to both accelerated tempo of modern life along with its formalization and current art market conjuncture. In contrast to this tendency works of many Russian artists tend to re-establish classical painting culture as independent elitist art form which can be appreciated only by the narrow circle of fans and art hedonists of special kind. Mila Arbuzova’s paintings combine the realistic painting’s techniques (including attention to details, subtle color nuances, harmonious composition solutions) with actual social issues, absurd sense of humor and lyricism. All these features traditionally characterize art of St. Petersburg. In Mila’s paintings and graphics the principles of both figurative and abstract art are incarnated. Abstraction, however, does not play a merely decorative role: you can be sure that it is integrated into the plot.

All Arbuzova’s work deal with a few major themes: