Material, Process, Aesthetics
The world today is geared toward instant gratification, filled with colors and dramatic scenes shouting to attract your attention and extract an immediate emotional reaction - similar to fast food and social media - with little long-term benefits. Which is the opposite intention of my art, which invites you to slow down, decelerate. It is challenging to embrace something quieter and calmer. It was challenging for me too, to accept that this is the kind of art that I can do. That I am not being more expressive and much louder, like the things around me.
When I was a teen discovering the art world, I was drawn to abstract expressionism. I enjoyed watching it and thought that I would enjoy creating it. But the opposite happened. When I took a brush with oil paint for the first time, I could not help but slowly and pedantically paint a portrait in very soft grades of beige. I began to enjoy seeing the quiet paintings that I had produced, but I did not feel like that should be something that I wanted to do until I did the first abstract ink series in 2013. The new side of my art was the material and the use of it.
The beauty of art is that it does not have any rules. Pure self-expression arises from a personal need. Besides, in order to be of worth, art requires that it contain something new, which has not been experienced, asked, visualized, materialized, or felt before. For me, the challenge is in reflecting, with honesty and clarity, on why and how I make my decisions to create a piece. The audience deserves an explanation, and the artist must seek answers to what we do and why we do it. But it is not easy to articulate. Art is a somewhat unconscious decision. Doing exactly what I do may be influenced by complex combinations of childhood events blended with a way of life and specific taste or aesthetics. For some artists, the explanation lies in conceptualizing the art, adding conscious meanings and raising questions about society and politics rather than in personal motivation. For me, it is a combination of the materials, the process, and aesthetics.
The primary material I use is Chinese ink, which I discovered in China. I fell in love with it, not for its tradition but for its texture, smell, color, reflection, and depth. The texture was so thick that when I made my first line with a nib pen, I could feel the line by the tips of my fingers. And I could not help but touch and try to feel the lines of the graphic illustrations that I did. Later, working with more significant and more abstract works, I would still enjoy the texture of the ink lines that seemed to create a vibration, sensed both visually and physically. The color of ink is cold matte black. It is already balanced by itself. It changes colors from black to white by reflecting the light. The nib pens that I use are scratching the paper surface, letting the paper absorb the ink unevenly, creating a unique texture and a 3D effect. It becomes especially visible with light reflecting from the ink surface.
In China, ink is traditionally used with brushes. Personally, I prefer using the more robust and controlled instrument of nib pens. I got my first nib pens from my mother. In the Soviet Union, the nibs were in every house, and my mother also worked with them. I love the strong and sharp lines they create. They are not flexible, so it requires time and practice to start using them elegantly. The line created by a nib pen with ink becomes solid and stable on water color paper's thick surface.
Paper is another essential element in my art. And the quality of the paper is crucial to me. The line can change depending on the texture and thickness of the paper. It is also pleasant to interact with something very natural and enjoy a finely crafted sheet in a beautiful white color. In China, a thin rice paper is fundamental for ink expression and is regarded as a meaningful cultural heritage. Unfortunately, I could never understand the beauty of its fragility, and despite its rich cultural background, I cannot force myself to enjoy it. I particular, I dislike seeing the firm consistency of Chinese ink fading around the paper. I prefer to put the texture of ink on the water color paper that absorbs it just enough but not completely thereby maintaining its shape and creating an almost 3D effect on the surface of the paper.
To create this effect, I need to really go slow and focus on the feeling. This, in turn, creates a calmness driven by the colours of black and white and the hundreds of lines. Repetition created with lines and patterns evokes a resonating sense of vibration. Even though the patterns are a conscious decision, the concept of self-repetition within goes beyond the work itself. I create art similar to each other, with slight differences in colors, shapes, or shadows. And when you look at these similar pieces, you might need to stop for a moment to spot a different feeling stimulated by a dot or a new element.
Repetition is fundamental to us. It creates comfort due to its stability. Repeated patterns lie in nature, in cells, in landscapes, as well as in our biases, in our likes and dislikes. Whether it is as complex as our habit of always falling in love with the wrong person or as mundane as having a cup of coffee in the morning, the notion can be traced back to a habit, challenging to break. I wanted to express this idea in The Patterns series I was working on for more than a year, where every pattern is almost a copy of itself. They are meant to represent some kind of inherent bias within a person, reinforced by repetition. In the end, The Patterns became a statement of my own bias of creating through constant repetition.
Repeating the works, the patterns and lines, and even daily rituals has become my art meditation. This constant repetition gives me a space for thinking through the process, which can take hours, days, weeks, and sometimes months to finish. I enjoy being with myself and slowing down to the point where I take my time with my thoughts and my feelings, effortlessly, fading away without losing track of the line. My process is a personal space with myself.
Traditional materials and meditative processes are not new, but the combination of all of the above helps to create something new. The duality of the conventional and the contemporary inspires me. The mix of nature and the modern concrete city. The beauty of the combination of their fragility and strength. And how we live between these two. That space in between is the one I want to explore.
What lies between traditional and contemporary, between black and white, between complex and simple, and between hardness and softness. Visually, I like to find this space where my works can stay very simple but not dull; complex but not over-emotional. While creating each piece, I always wonder what else I can do with the medium and the aesthetics, and when my ideas will reach the end. But sometimes, I allow myself to cross the line and go to the extreme of complexity or simplicity for the sake of testing my senses and vision and seeing if certain elements have that «In-Between» feeling.
Experimenting with new patterns, new texture, or new colors, my art becomes a form of research. Research of the visual for «In-Between» space, while analyzing myself through it.
