The work of the Russian painter who has dedicated her life to chronicling the changing face of her country’s capital.

This is the work of Russian artist Alyona Dergilyova, who has spent the past four decades capturing the streets of her native Moscow in exquisitely detailed watercolors.

Dergilyova, 69, began capturing street scenes in Moscow in the 1980s. As the city began developing rapidly in the 2000s, her theme took on historical significance as she watched elegant, time-worn buildings transformed or replaced by generic corporate structures.

But her paintings carry their historic role lightly. Dergilyova is capable of a wide range of artistic techniques but has settled on a naive, almost cartoonish style to capture her beloved home city.

Dergilyova told RFE/RL she works by finding somewhere discreet on the street to stand, then makes a quick sketch of the scene on an oven-tray-sized sheet of her favorite French art paper.

With the sketch drawn, the artist then goes back to her central Moscow apartment to begin work in earnest.

Dergilyova says using watercolors is “the most difficult technique because you can’t correct mistakes.” With so much at stake in each stroke she works “only a little at a time,” with each painting taking nearly a month to complete.

While sketching her scenes, the painter — whose background is in portraiture — says she also makes quick scribbles of people passing by. “I always do my best to capture exactly those people who walked in a certain place,” Dergilyova says.

Dergilyova’s work often includes garish commercial signs that many artists would avoid. But she says “all the ‘ugly’ details of the street make everyday life vivid and uniquely valuable. Bright bags with logos on them mark the period of time we are living through, which is very important to me. I always try to get a living picture.”

Some of Dergilyova’s recent work is marked by the coronavirus pandemic that has transformed street life around the world.

This 2020 painting captures the sudden prevalence of food-delivery workers after the pandemic closed restaurant doors. The painter says the delivery people “truly interest” her for the unexpected flashes of color they bring to the street. “They have colored our life so much.”

The painter says she is less enthused about the presence of expression-obscuring face masks. This is one of only two of her works featuring masks.

On strolls through her city, Dergilyova keeps an eye on some of the elegant buildings she has painted through the years. Over time, she says, details and accessories on a house might appear and disappear “like jewelry on a woman.”

Some of the scenes captured in Dergilyova’s watercolors are easy to locate and compare on Google Maps.

The street view of this address shows that the signage and other small details of the scene have changed since it was painted around 2015.

Dergilyova says her ongoing quest to chronicle Moscow’s overlooked spaces has its roots partly in her childhood, when the country’s communist authorities demolished her family home.

In the late 1960s, officials began installing characterless Soviet apartments on the street where Dergilyova played and in 1972 the wreckers came for her home. Today an office building stands in its place.

This is one of several paintings Dergilyova made in the town of Zaraysk, near Moscow, through the 1980s and 1990s, which she is now compiling for a book. The artist says that “the vast majority of buildings I painted in Zaraysk no longer exist. They were demolished, burned, or heavily renovated, therefore the book will be the town’s chronicle.”

Meanwhile, Dergilyova’s continuous life’s work remains central Moscow, where on literally every walk she finds something new she wants to paint.

The artist, who has become a kind of visual historian of her city, says her biggest regret is that “there isn’t enough life to paint everything.”