Art guides new life to unimagined heights.
My story begins in Moscow, Russia, Christmas 2004. At that time, I was a recently divorced single mother trying to find her way in a life and country that were anything but stable. Enter Michael; a Canadian ex-pat who had been living and working in Moscow for about a year. Without expectation or foresight, we fell deeply in love. Within a year we were certain we wanted to spend our lives together. He asked me to marry him at the top of Mount Sinai, in Egypt, as the sun was rising.
We saved up and moved our new family to Canada. I agreed to live there for two years; after which Mike said he would take me anywhere in the world I wanted to live.
He cheated!
He moved us to British Columbia. That was in the summer of 2006. I was completely inspired by the beauty of BC; I could barely contain it. Here the Great Mother lived and thrived and dominated with stunning, dangerous, captivating, thrilling power. She was everywhere and everything and I had never been so in touch with it.
I had always dreamed of painting, but I never done more than sketch with pen or pencil. I could not work for quite a while after arriving here, so I decided to pursue my dream. It has been like nothing I could have imagined. By the time I could legally work in Canada, I was already a small business owner.
The majority of my work features a technique in which I manipulate ink in a manner similar to watercolor. The advantage of ink is that it retains the vivid hues and sharper contrasts characteristic of ink, with all the bleeding and fading that watercolour is famous for. As well, ink dries quickly and permanently to the paper, allowing for layering of paint. With traditional watercolour, attempting to layer generally makes mud.
I have also experimented with standard acrylics on a variety of canvases, woods and even clay surfaces. These experiments have resulted in some of my favorite and most popular work. However, it was the discovery of the ink & watercolour technique that really set my artistic vision free. Of course, I am still experimenting, though my style is likely to retain the characteristics that makes it so easily recognizable: simple and whimsical.
In terms of theme, my work attempts to present it, as a given, that there is no greater source of inspiration than the natural world. Nature, as a topic within my work, can be lonely, majestic, playful, powerful and, in many instances, unmistakably feminine. Exploration of a feminine connection to the personality of nature, from gentle nurturer to savage destroyer, has spontaneously found itself among my most commonly reoccurring themes.
