COLLECTIVE MEMORY, SOCIALIST REALISM AND CONTEMPORARY PAINTING

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Assembly
30x36 inches
oil and acrylic on canvas
2019
in private collection

I was really excited when an Australian artist Melissa Corbett approached me about recording an interview. Melissa is living and working in Spain and has been hosting artist interviews on her blog. Melissa is passionate about paper which is the unifying medium for her collage, printmaking, watercolors and comics. She embraces her obsession with pop and counterculture, and she is dedicated to social change.

Melissa’s warm and welcoming personality is perfect for interviewing strangers, and she made me feel immediately at ease even though I generally try to avoid being on video. Her questions were well researched and insightful, and it was a great experience geek out about art history together.

We talked about my history and experiences of growing up in Soviet and post-Soviet Ukraine, as well as the trajectory of Socialist Realism that become the dominant artistic doctrine in the USSR and reined supreme for many decades.

I am by no means an expert on the matter, but I am an eyewitness to its pervasive presence, the thorough infiltration into everyday life.  Just like many people in the West claim to be immune to the insidious power of advertising due to having been exposed to it for so long, the same way many former soviet citizens ironically dismissed the propaganda-laden images of muscular steel workers and robust collective farm milk maids. 

Socialist Realism of my youth continues to influence my paintings

Happy collective farm workers in a painting by Tatyana Golembievskaya (1967)

Tatyana Ostapenko
Harvest
36x48 inches
acrylic on canvas
SOLD

We all carry with us the indoctrination of our youth.

Our environments, the visual language that surrounds us nudges, if not thrusts us toward particular ideologies, no matter how independent and free thinking we think ourselves.  

I grew up surrounded by images of impossibly happy children, noble cosmonauts and tractor operators with chiseled jaws that would make Superman wither with envy. They were always gazing into the glorious future, somewhere far off from the confines of the painted surfaces, into the promised bright beyond that we all were marching toward together.

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Sentry
64x48 inches
acrylic on canvas
2019
SOLD

Now, I have to make one thing clear, very few people in my immediate surroundings believed any of this messianic deliverance-to-the-glorious-future rhetoric. The short period of pre-collapse soviet history I got to witness was definitely tinted by more sarcasm and cynicism than great sacrifice for the great communist beyond. Murmurs of descent were audible even to my very young ears. Transistor radios were tuned to the jammed signals from BBC and Radio Liberty, carbon copy typewriter pages of banned books were circulating almost freely between friends and political jokes were accorbic.

Gorbachev Evening News
18x24 inches
oil on canvas
2016
in private collection

There is an awesome power of the visual image, especially if it is carefully crafted for indoctrination. Despite knowing them to be heralds of false hope and outright lies, the pictorial language and a cast of characters of Socialist Realism were the constant silent companions of my youth. And they are all still here, downloaded into my subconscious, alive and well despite the collapse of the empire that populated every wall and placard with them.


Instead of denying my dubious heritage, I embrace it. I reference compositions, stiff heroic figures and vast landscapes that characterize Socialist Realist paintings. They inform my current art practice, just as much as El Greco’s emaciated and ecstatic saints or Sargent’s panterly bravura. (I was a strange child, might not come as a surprise to you, but I used to draw from El Greco’s paintings when I was about eight years old. That was my idea of fun. Kinda still is.) 


and if you are still reading,

Here is the full interview with Melissa Corbett

ARTIST STUDIO PRACTICE ON LOCKDOWN

INTERVIEWS, DISCUSSIONS AND MUSINGS

This has been a busy month!

I know, it sounds strange because we are on lockdown and can’t go anywhere. But this is precisely the reason.

Suddenly the whole world is much more on my wavelength and a lot of the art world interaction and networking has moved online. While I love seeing artwork in real life, I sincerely dislike the party scene atmosphere of gallery openings and many art events. I hate mingling and making small talk. I like talking about things of substance and mutual interest. Art nerd talk.

And the format of an online studio visit, live video interview and email exchanges suits my nerdy, vehemently introverted self just fine. And now that everyone else is on board with me, I am thoroughly in my element. Yay!

And since a lot of recent questions and discussions come up regularly in my communication with both collectors and arts professionals, I decided to put some of them together in one place here.

Welcome to my breakfast nook video recording studio

It has great natural light for video recordings and interviews

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Q&A:

Q: Super interested in your palette. Does it reflect a time period?

A: it does. I always think back to the 90s, the post Berlin Wall Ukraine: lots of mud, dust and concrete with the occasional bright spot of a coveted imported plastic bag or a fake designer sweatshirt. All manner of brown grays with a sudden scream of neon green or extra saturated fuchsia.

This is a great question. It made me realize that this is precisely where my palette comes from. And I always thought it came from 19th century realism with a touch of Die Brücke…

Q: have you ever thought to use objects to paint on that are not canvas/board, or picked other shapes besides squares and rectangles?

A: I have considered it. While I have seen outstanding examples of merging of painting and sculpture, I am not compelled to create those myself. At least not right now while I am still interested in figurative representational painting.

I thoroughly enjoy the suspension of disbelief that the idea of a painting provides within the context of the Western art tradition. Akin to a theater stage once the actors enter it, transcends its nature and becomes an opening to a different world, providing a platform for imagination to unfold. I want to make my supports as non-self aware as they can be, as to make them all but invisible and simply provide the stage for the magic within.

Q: Have you ever felt that there is something that needs to be said? Or some hidden/past that can be revived?

A: There is an element of reluctantly indulged nostalgia in my work. I am repeatedly drawn to images taken around the time I was a child. I think a lot of my interest in the late Soviet and post-Soviet time is purely selfish and self focused. I want to re-live, re-experience my childhood. I want to understand the larger time and epoch when it happened. But ultimately it’s my memory and longing for a child-like perception of the world that dictates my reference choices.

Q: I think Americans react to something in your work, but obviously won’t understand the references. What do you think others are getting from your work and does it matter?

A: I am deeply invested in using reference images that are important, relevant and meaningful to me. I am certain they don’t communicate directly with an American audience, especially if my viewers aren’t too familiar with Soviet/Post-Soviet environs.

I don’t expect to have a universal appeal or deliver some manner of pan-cultural message, yet perhaps the limited palette, my muted color choices, and interactions between the figures and the environment can convey a certain sense of unease, unfinished transition, unsettling change and displacement.

Q: what does the material mean to you? How does this relate to your content?

A: The material reins supreme for me. I am all about paint, the act of painting. The malleability, the unpredictability as well as ability to describe form exactly, to represent the light and create veritable shadows… I am in love with paint!

I’ve always wanted to paint. My content is just something that holds my attention well and long enough to indulge in the luxury of smearing paint around.

Q: Have you considered creating a series, a story that pulls the viewer in?

A:  All my recent shows are strongly unified by content. Thematically and visually they are a series. My work was included in a group show at the Ford Gallery a few months ago. The show title was Around the Narrative Lens. The curatorial idea was to show artists whose work is often perceived to have strong narrative and to engage in a dialog about such perception and artists intention. I feel like all my paintings are a part of one large series. A disjunctive, non linear narrative, for certain. More Faulkner than Steven King. 

Q: can a painting capture or take further the idea of preservation that treats paint not as a preservative but as blocks of raw intensities. (raw = the light of a moment or a gust of wind on a particular day)

A: Oh, do I dearly wish for raw intensity. I certainly do! I want the abandon of gesture, yet at the same time I absolutely have to improve my representational skills. Perhaps I’ve been focusing on accuracy too much and it’s time to indulge in some abandon.

Sargent and de Kooning on the same surface… Not too high of a goal for after seven years of painting, right?

Q: When piecing together a picture plane with some recognizable elements and blurred edges/spaces, I wonder what (content-wise) ends up on the surface? Similarly, what is cut out and/or reassembled?

A: Sometimes there are new elements that emerge, say, glowing under-painting suggesting smoldering fire, etc, but usually once I’ve decided loosely on the composition, the content takes on the guiding, yet secondary role and the painting becomes an exercise in paint handling and formal decision-making.

Q: is the abstraction and ambiguity you seem after in your work related to the politics tied to your process, or do they want reconciliation?

A: I feel like abstraction and ambiguity has more chances of transcending the very specific time and place and have more universal psychological impact. I also don’t want to come across as preachy and insisting on a particular solution. I am more concerned with intimate individual experience and how it’s affected by the larger political forces.

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ARTIST WRITING GROUP

What: artist writing group

Where: in the comfort of your own home

How: using google hangouts

When: once a week

Why: structure, community and accountability

Writing is one of the hardest things for me. 

Some of you might be curious why a painter needs to write? Doesn’t she have brushes and delicious gooey paints to smear around to her heart’s content?

But a contemporary artist absolutely has to write. Even if just to clarify ideas, to check in internally, but mainly to communicate with peers, collectors and institutions.

I have a writer’s block the size of a city block. And I promise, I’ve been trying. But I do best under pressure. Peer pressure that is. The positive kind.

I thrive in an open studio environment. Back in the olden days, before the current homebound era, I always had my artist friends to joining me in the studio to work side by side. This is different from a critique group where artists gather to give feedback on specific pieces, either finished or works in progress. It’s also nothing like a studio visit where an artist presents their current work and speaks about studio practice.

These are wonderful things to do, they help us get clarity and offer valuable feedback, but I need another type of support: the immediate kind that is available when another painter is mixing her palette right next to mine.

When we see each other’s work in its intimate immediacy, we can offer and receive input right there and then. Now, I know this can sound terrifying and vulnerable to some, so don’t try it with mean spirited competitive types! For me, many drawing mistakes were fixed because I had another set of fresh and unbiased eyes to spot them. Camaraderie, mutual support, listening and being heard in the midst of the creative process, well, that’s what I want in my studio environment.

And considering how well this has worked for painting, why not try it for something immensely more challenging, for writing? 

Initially the idea was a weekly or bi-weekly meeting at the Erickson Gallery downtown Portland for a small group of artists that meets to dedicate time writing: grant writing, completing those applications that we usually leave until last minute, blog writing, or even just uninterrupted and supported time to reflect on our current practice.

I imagined a brief check in, about a minute or two, to share with others what we are going to work on. Then 45 min to an hour to write. Time blocking isn’t just for corporate types! We can use the tools to help our less structured artistic work. And for those who would like to share and get feedback from the group, we can do quick read throughs and edits. I am open to suggestions.

Let’s harness the supportive energy of a group that gathers for the same purpose. Sometimes our will and focus wavers. This is a way to anchor attention and use the positive psych of peer pressure to our advantage.

Please let me know if you are interested in joining me in this adventure. Let me know what days and times work for you and lets get this going!

Give me De Kooning and Courbet: I want mundane and uncanny on the same canvas

I bring the sensibilities and influences of both Soviet socialist realism as well as the classical European painting tradition to my thoroughly contemporary immigrant perspective.  I am both the old and the new.

Instead of destroying or denying the old, I take what I love about it and put it into my employ to serve my contemporary purposes. I use the tradition of realism to anchor my shaky identity of a transplant who’s been trying to assimilate into a different culture and temporality. 

I want both, the mastery of old and the audacity of the new.
I want to de Kooning and Courbet on the same canvas.
I want the rich glow of traditional oil disrupted by the violence that can only show itself in painting now.
I want my roots to show.

I paint tired people from underprivileged backgrounds. I paint over-sexualized young girls who think that a thicker layer of lipstick and a fuller fringe of fake lashes will give them a chance to escape the habitual squalor to a sunny life from a luxury cruise ship advert.

I paint mediocrity and the absurd. I paint what my life would have been had I not left.
I feel contempt and compassion, I feel survivor’s guilt. I wonder if I have the right to my imagery.
How longer can I live away from a place and still claim authenticity when depicting it? Aren’t I a tourist in my own past, and my alternative present by now?

I am after the absurd and uncanny, but only so slightly. 
I love it in the middle: the slightly dusty, not too worn out, pinching, but not rubbing raw; the mild annoyance that wears at the patience of living. 
I want the texture that is seen every day, familiar to the last crack and crevasse, and therefore rendered invisible. 
I want the familiar uncanny, the strangeness of an otherwise mundane dream, obliquely noticed yet not peculiar enough to demand scrutiny.

On Creative Procrastination, Venice Lagoon and Painting Process

Small oil sketch of the Venice Lagoon

While Organizing my studio storage (I am still working on creating an inventory system, one day I’ll get here, wish me luck!), I came across this little oil study for a painting my mom asked me to do some years ago. She traveled to Italy for the first time and fell in love with Venice. She sent me some of her photos from the trip and wanted me to make her a painting of the famous view of the Venice Lagoon resplendent with the shiny lacquered gondolas, turquoise water and San Marcos campanile in the background.

So, wanting to make sure I make a good solid picture of my Mom’s new favorite magical place, I dutifully set up a methodical approach to create a large oil painting. I studied her photos, mixed colors, experimented with the composition and made a quick study in oils to get a feel for all of it. Then, following the proper tried and true protocols of classical painting, I was going to make the real thing.

But it's a funny thing about me and preparatory studies: I can never make a painting if I make a study first. Seems like such a logical thing: do a small sketch, figure out the composition and the color palette and then transfer these ideas and discoveries to make a large solid painting based on all this information.

Sounds smart, but I guess I like to work harder than smarter.

The act of painting has always been about a process of discovery for me. Paintings I end up making are almost byproducts, evidence, artifacts that document the research, all the exploration and all the mistakes. It's an open-ended process. And if I answer all the questions in the sketch, then there is simply no reason to make a "real" painting.

I usually work very fast and deliver before the deadlines, but just could not bring myself to give my mom the large painting version because it lacked the spontaneity and aliveness that I am after. So, instead of feeling guilty for failing to produce a large painting of her beloved Venice Lagoon for my mom for years now, I will be shipping her this small oil on paper study. The gesture is vivid, the fun I had making it is evident.

I hope mom likes it