What does the phrase “I’m an artist, this is how I see it” mean to you?
I also like another phrase: “Every artist paints themselves.” And I’m one of them. Like everyone else, I only ever paint myself.
When did you first realize you saw the world differently from others?
There were a few moments that led me into art. The first was when I left competitive sports, rhythmic gymnastics. From seven to ten years old I was just drifting, doing nothing in particular, and I longed terribly for professional sport: I'd started my career in the Soviet Union's Olympic reserve program, but there was no longer anyone to drive me to practice. That's how my sports career ended — and as we know, in classical ballet, gymnastics, figure skating, people start their profession at a very early age. I was no exception.
Back then I thought my life was sports, dancing, aerobics. I still love dancing to this day, and I even earned money from it: in my first year of university I danced in nightclubs for pay.
But this “drifting” led me to an incident when I was ten: I was walking with two friends on the outskirts of Moscow, and an eraser fell on me. Some guys shouted from a balcony: “Girls, we were smoking up here, we have an art studio, an eraser fell — could you bring it up, please?” My friends immediately said, “Maybe you should go?” And like some naive little flower, I grabbed the eraser and ran into the nearest building to find the right apartment.
It was love at first sight. I saw an atmosphere of freedom — for me, that's still the flagship idea, one I now formulate in English, because I live and work as an international artist, and most of my ideas come to me in the language the whole world speaks: “Freedom and Power.” That's what I felt walking into that studio at ten years old. I rushed straight to the teacher — Alexander Shiryaev. He was sitting with a friend, drinking vodka, smoking, and playing backgammon in his two-room apartment — and he looked like the happiest man alive.
I walked up and told him that by sheer chance I had stumbled onto his studio and that I really wanted to learn to paint right then and there. The men laughed: “Little girl, how old are you? Go home, ask your parents.” He explained that he needed a written request from my mother asking that I be admitted into the district art studio — in the Soviet Union, good artists were required to run such clubs for children for next to nothing. I ran home, to the neighboring district, explained everything to my mom, she wrote the request — and within half an hour I was a member of the studio, where I studied under Shiryaev for several years afterward. He was a very fine landscape painter. As you can see, my art ended up going in a completely different direction.
At that age, of course, I wasn't thinking about what kind of artist I was — I didn't even know the art world existed. My parents aren't from that world: there's no artistic lineage in my family, no painter grandparents. It was simply a calling from my own soul — and, thank God, my mother supported me. She always said the most important thing was freedom: when a person has freedom, they have a chance to unlock all their talents, and without freedom those chances shrink drastically. Freedom was my mother's true religion, and I was very lucky with my parents: the lessons they gave me carried me through my whole life and brought good results.
There were a couple more episodes from childhood. My father's best friend gave my mother art albums every year for her birthday — brought from abroad, from the Louvre, from the Prado, from the world's best collections. We had so many of these albums, standing behind the glass of a Czech-made wall unit like decorative panels. All through my childhood I leafed through those glossy pictures, looked at Rembrandt and other great masters — and apparently that also settled somewhere in my subconscious. And there's one more moment — perhaps the earliest of all: my mother's brother bought a watercolor set, showed me how to use it, and painted a sunset or a sunrise. When I saw that, something inside me, in my soul, in my heart, stirred. I didn't yet understand what it was, but those simple little stripes of light, painted with a brush, made an absolutely enormous impression on me. These three childhood moments are what predetermined that I would become an artist.
But I repeat: my unique vision came much later — it's a fusion of the world of the soul, esotericism, and visual art. It took shape once I began making conscious choices. In essence, I built it deliberately myself, setting a course toward my own style and my own vision.
How does your unique vision show up in everyday life?
It shows up in a rather funny way. Some of my friends say I have a telling name — Svetlana, meaning “light.” By the way, I got that name by chance: my mother had a very long and difficult labor, and right at the moment the shift changed in the maternity ward, a new midwife came on — and my mother gave birth to me within minutes. I was named after her, after that very Svetlana.
I see color in people — for me that's a completely ordinary thing. I've changed my partners so dramatically that their own neighbors stopped recognizing them: I can see how a person might blossom and what they need for that to happen. And if they listen to me and follow my suggestions, they bring out the best in themselves. That's how this vision manifests. I see beauty in life, in people, I like beauty, I take pleasure in it — it nourishes me, and I produce it in turn. Though my art can't always be called beautiful in the conventional sense, but as they say, there's no arguing about taste.
Have there been moments when you had to defend your vision?
It's a free market, a free choice. When I was younger, this was more painful for me. Now, if someone doesn't like something, I honestly won't even bother discussing it — I don't have time for that. I have my own standard: I'm a singer of freedom and truth. What I reflect in my work, I first see within myself — through my channel of connection to the cosmos, to the unconscious, to God, to boundless expanses. So there's no room for debate here. If we're working on a joint project together — that's a different matter, then we can discuss things. But if it's just criticism of my art — that's like criticizing my soul. Well, as they say: talk away, talk away.
How do you explain your art to people who don't understand it?
Honestly, it's like marriage or choosing a nanny: either it resonates or it doesn't. I don't make art that needs to be explained or invented. I see — all these things are alive, they exist in the world of my unconscious. I see them, I reflect them, I'm constantly making sketches in my notebooks. And when I have the time, strength, and opportunity, I turn them into larger projects and works. I don't explain anything: I simply take the subject that, for whatever reason, wants to manifest through my unconscious, write a small note about it — and that's it.
Does your vision change over the years, or does it stay constant?
It's constantly changing — it's like taste. First you like brunettes, then blondes, then grapes, then a Mercedes, and then suddenly an eggplant-colored Lada. Life changes, and I'm a constantly evolving artist. Nothing stagnant can survive here, because I pass through my own evolutionary currents and rise along with them — or at least I try not to slide downward.
What do you feel when you create a work that no one understands?
Here we come back to the title of this conversation: I'm an artist, this is how I see it. I see it, I feel it, I'm a singer of truth and freedom — and freedom is a very important quality of my soul, a quality I am the singer of. So if someone doesn't understand — that's fine. Everyone understands like through like, everyone understands only what they're capable of understanding. I don't really react to it, because I'm not working for one specific viewer — I feel that I'm working for the Universe. I don't have a single addressee in art. I know this is truthful art, that it looks exactly as it is, and that's enough for me: what I create carries no lie in it. That's what gives me strength — knowing that what I'm creating is truth.
How does the philosophy of “this is how I see it” help you through creative crises?
My creative crises usually come from a parallel world — and that parallel world is my personal life: as a mother, as a wife, as a lover. If something's going wrong there, it always spills over into my work. And as far as I understand, this is really a women's story in general. I want to quote an Indian man named Osho, who left India for America: he always laughed about how when men came to him for consultations, their questions would be: who will be the next president, what will the dollar's exchange rate be. But when women came, there was always one question: does he love me or not, will he leave me or not. Men and women are triggered by fundamentally different things.
If something's wrong in my life as a woman, that's what turns into a creative crisis — because in my work I'm as stable as a tank. At ten years old I realized I was an artist, and that was that — I've been crawling along this path on my own treads ever since, I like that word. I go and go, I go and go, sometimes slower, sometimes faster, speeding up and slowing down. Along this path all sorts of things happen, but I really only have one true crisis, like every woman: if for a man, as I've heard, everything depends on work, on the dollar's exchange rate, on his boss, on his project, then for me personal, feminine happiness comes first. If something's not right there, it casts a destructive shadow over my creative work. I can go months without working if something's wrong in my personal life.
What would you say to young artists who are afraid to show their unique vision?
What can you say to that. You always have to walk your own path. These days every family has its own coach, its own psychologist, everyone's writing out big and small goals. But being an artist is about something else. To become an artist, of course you need to set goals and achieve them, but beyond that there's what I call the seventh string. A guitar can have six strings, or it can have seven — and art is exactly that seventh string. You may have it, or you may not. But if you have it and you want to play it — then play it. Practice gives birth to flawlessness. Practice, practice, and practice again. Just practice and be who you are. There's nothing new to it.