Yaroslava Liseeva | Russia
We live in the world where everything is inconstant and changing, moving and interconnecting. The life is very complicated and simple at the same time. There is always chaos and order.
My art and my style grow out of my perception of the reality as a versatile combination of precision and spontaneity, fluency and precipitancy, tension and harmony, conflict and balance.
In my works I appeal to emotional and spiritual dimensions. Nowadays when our minds are overloaded with tons of information, social networks, news, it is very important just to make a stop and to open the eyes and see the world around, listen to it, feel it. We can see and feel so many things, when we tune ourselves for that.
When we are connected with the world through our souls, we start moving in the Flow together with everything around and find out our personal meanings and answers.
The main constructive element in my paintings is the line, similar to isolines on the maps. I call them ‘iSOULines’ because they reveal the energy of inner tension and movement of the sensations born within the flow. The canvas becomes the map.
Using traditional fine art media like oil paints and focusing on classical landscape images I try to create dynamic, voluminous and flowing world. The trees, the oceans, the lakes, wind, fire… The real things. But if we observe these phenomena with all our senses, they open for us their metaphorical essence and acquire universal, mythological characteristics.
Catching the Flow
Contemporary Art Station: Tell us about how you got started. When did you know you wanted to be an artist?
Painting is a very special world for me. The world I tried to escape from for many years. Since childhood I have always been drawing and painting and even dreamed of becoming an artist, but for some reasons (I have just been afraid) I tried other paths in my life. Studied geography at the University, brought up children. 20 years ago I made a serious attempt to become an artist. I studied drawing and painting for 7 years at the art studio of V.Akulinin in Moscow, even exhibited with my teacher and almost considered myself as an artist, but again escaped. Then I tried myself in different crafts like mosaics, glass painting and lampwork. Lampwork (making glass beads in the flame of a gas torch) became my professional occupation for several years. Then I changed the direction of my life and turned to coaching and psychology. It took me another couple of years. But every time I have been drawn back to canvas by some inner forces. I couldn’t resist this. And at some moment I realized that there is no other way for me except painting. I am grateful for all the experience in other fields, it broadened my vision and definitely influenced my art.
CAS: What is your process like, from initial idea to the creation of the piece? Do you usually develop the idea for a project before you find the "canvas", or vice versa?
The ideas for my works often come out of nowhere, all of a sudden. Suddenly I see something in an ordinary landscape and feel inside an impulse, a cluster of some tension, which needs to be released. At that moment the movement starts - quick or slow, sharp or fluent, which I transfer to canvas. I can call this the Flow - flow of the energy of interaction of my feelings, my mind, my soul with the nature.
Sometimes I have a theme or even themes I want to paint. I keep them in mind and just wait to catch a moment when I see something and get the answer. It may take time, even years to find and feel the right impulse. But I am always ready for that.
And while painting quite often big changes can be made to the initial idea. It is just very important to be in the process, carefully listen to your inner voice and feel the necessity of the changes.
CAS: What do you love most about your creative process?
Often I can hear from people who are far from the arts that it is “so beautiful and great to live such an inspirational life and create-create-create with inspiration”. There might be some artists who can permanently feel the inspiration, but I am definitely not among them. When I work - I just live the whole life together with my painting. And inspiration here is far from being the most important. I even don’t know whether l ever experience it (except when getting the idea of the future work and making a sketch). I just live with my painting, grow it like a baby, talk with it, feel happy when something goes well, grumble and argue with it (sometimes I even feel like doing a battle) when something goes wrong. It is like a child which doesn’t always obey. And the result is often not like I expected in the beginning, sometimes the painting starts to “dictate” or just “asks” for the changes, or “suggests”some new ideas and vision. But that is great experience every time and I appreciate every moment of being in the process.
Emptiness. Solitude. The Way
CAS: What role does art and the artist play in the broader social conversation today?
Art and artist today, in my opinion, are strongly connected with what is called “reality”, even if this kind of art doesn’t work with reality in direct way. On the other hand, art and artists today don’t try to reflect, interpret or imitate life and reality as it did in the past. Today the most important goal of art is to translate as much as possible different sides and forms of reality, which also includes our images and impressions of reality.
Actually art today has become a media, but a unique media that can tell society something that no other types of media would. Today, I think, art lives through a reunion of “the message”. Due to a specific form art can translate such types of messages and values that can really influence people and society in positive way. I see that art and artists today, unlike all kinds of social media that make people really aggressive, could make people more empathetic to each other, to the nature, to the whole planet.
It is very important that art today gives the “voice” to different kinds of subjects (physical or not) that haven’t got it. Along all the history of art society, nature and everything else has always been reflected through the personality of an artist. Nowadays we of course can’t refuse completely from the individuality of an artist, but the translations of all these things became more important than interpretations. Interpretation has become the goal of the viewer, and a piece of art couldn’t exist without him. That’s why art today is very social even if it doesn’t talk about social problems directly.
CAS: Name a few of your favourite artists and influences.
If we talk about the influences on my art, we should go back into my teenage, when I became fascinated by Sumi-e and Ukiyo-e art. I was practicing long and bold brush strokes for hours, painting cranes and flowers, I was copying Hokusai and Hirosige. I think that this art influenced me greatly and above all.
Then, also in my teens, I was absolutely mad about Vincent Van Gogh. His works, his life really impressed me. I never tried to copy him, but I always felt that his world was very close to mine, touched my heart, my feelings the deepest.
I love works by Nicholas Roerich. Though his views and philosophy may seem quite controversial and too esoteric, but his paintings, their energy resonate with my artistic perception.
I really love Wassily Kandinsky as an artist and as a thinker. I can spend hours in front of his works.
Among today’s artists whom I highly appreciate are David Hockney and Yayoi Kusama.
CAS: What is the best advice you received as an artist?
When I started studying arts my teacher kept saying that it is very important to learn the rules (of painting), to know the basics. Because when you know them, you can understand when to consciously break them, when there is the true sense for that. Then people see the idea. And that makes you the professional.
CAS: When did you discover your voice as an artist?
It is really very hard to say. There was no such a ‘moment of truth’. The whole my life is a process of unfolding and liberating this voice step by step. Concerning the style – I think it started to form when I was practicing sumi-e in my teens. The line is very important to me. It reflects the movement of the flow and captures the spirit .
When in the end of 1990-s I attended the painting classes and started to find my own way it came out very naturally. I just started doing it. The lines dividing the canvas into the system of the flows, expressing the flow of my feelings, my soul. I even call them the ‘iSOULines’.
Since then my artistic vision has been crystallizing and revealing along with my personal development. And it is very important to me these days (as I mentioned earlier) that my voice is not the only one to be heard, when people see my works. I really feel that I am translating more than my only feelings. And I am very happy when people find and feel something different and significant for them personally. It is like the metaphoric cards in psychology, when everyone finds his or her own meaning from the image. Our world is so full of meanings for everyone, everyone sees one’s own aspects in the same things. And that makes us all unique humans.
CAS: What advice would you give to emerging artists trying to find their own?
I do not consider myself as a person having the right to give advice. Any words like “be yourself” and “don’t be afraid…” or any other encouraging phrases seem to me too trivial.
May be only one thing, turning to my own experience. I can say that I had lots of doubts “to be or not to be” an artist (that doesn’t at all mean I ever doubted to paint or not to paint). But at one moment I realized that I could be a good and successful lampworker (and I was the one), I could become a good psychologist and art-therapist. But I would regret that I didn’t realize my art potential fully. And if I realize my potential as an artist I will never regret about not being lampworker or psychologist anymore. Because we have to do what we should do, what we are intended to do and what will never be done by anyone else. And this idea gave me strength in taking the final decision and is helping me to keep my way.
The Dance of the Wind
