Eugenie Vronskaya is a Russian born artist currently living and working in London.
She attended Krasnopresnenskaya School of Art and Fine Art University in Moscow. In 1989 Vronskaya arrived to UK and in 1991 she became the first Russian Student ever attending MA at the Royal College of Art.
Vronskaya was invited by Sir Anthony Caro to participate in the International Triangle Workshop in New York state USA and subsequently was involved in running a number of Triangle International workshops in Africa (Zimbabwe, South Africa and Botswana).
Her work could be found in many private collections across the world as well as at Tate Britain, V&A Museum in London, Borchard collection, Art UK, Pushkin and Tret’yakov Gallery in Moscow. Most recently her paintings have been chosen for the RA summer show four years running.
Artist Q&A with Eugenie Vronskaya
by Dr Claudia Milburn
Q. What is your background / training and how influential has that been?
My art education began at the age of 11 when I studied the icon paintings. I was taught how to prepare the board, how to make paints out of stones, how to make very fine brushes and how to paint a straight line of even pigmentation/colour consistency. We copied a lot of under drawings of old icon painting and frescos. In hindsight, I can say with the upmost certainty that it was one of the most extraordinary parts of my entire education. However, back then, half of the time I was bored and reluctant. At that point I was fighting against what felt like constriction and confinement. I wanted to do it my own way! At age 13 I had made up my mind to be an artist and joined a regular evening art school. In 1983, aged 17, I gained a place at the University of Art. We were taught across many disciplines (printmaking, photography, book illustration, etc) but drawing and painting were the main subjects. It was not a particularly academic school. But we were taught to draw and to understand how to translate the three-dimensional world onto two-dimensional paper or canvas. We were taught to see and understand form and space. The teaching was very much based on the VHTUMAS concept, a school created in early 1910-20. Kandinsky, Popova, Drevin & Konchalovsky were amongst the tutors who taught there at the time. It very much resembled the Bauhaus school but was based around figurative and representational teaching.
In 1983-1988 I gained a BA and MA in Fine Art and, in 1989, I arrived in the UK where I met Sir Anthony Caro which was very much an education of its own kind. In 1991-93 I was accepted at RCA, London, the first Russian student. I gained my second MA in painting. Although after 1993 I did not enter any more institutions per se, my education never stops. I continue to learn every day from life and my experience in painting, from other artists around me and a great deal from my two sons.
Q. What are the principal sources of inspiration for your work?
Before I begin to answer this question, I just want to make a point on how we see and what we see. Two people might be standing in front of a scene and will recall two different pictures – we see and respond to the external world in line with our own unique inner world. Anything could be a trigger ‘a call’ for painting, an impulse to paint. It could be a certain light I catch from the corner of my eye, a view, a colour, a combination of colours, an image I come across in a magazine, newspaper, a book, a painting, a strange pattern arrangement on a floor – all those elements couple with the experience, but the visual almost always comes first. I am a visual person and I need to see and then experience what I see. An idea won’t do… I always thought that my absolute best paintings live in my head when I have an idea but the moment that I try to put them out on canvas or paper, they never work. Philip Guston said, “if you have an idea it is a limitation, they get in the way of ‘seeing’ and responding to the dialogue between you and the canvas.” I agree!
Q. The quality of gestural mark-making is evident in your practice. Can you tell me more about the significance of mark-making processes for you?
Mark-making is very important in painting, it is the language of painting, it’s essential, it carries the energy. It offers a different way in which to perceive the painting but mark-making for the sake of it, for the pure aesthetic, is not what I am after. The most powerful, authentic paintings carry the ‘mark-making’ as a by-product of expression, of something beyond the surface.
I found a few ways in which to treat the surface in preparation for the painting. It’s not always successful, but the journey of ‘mistakes’ and corrections is a way to find new textures and the process of painting creates an unexpected effect. One has to be vigilant and sensitive to see it and allow the paint to do its magic, but equally to recognise where the textures of mark-making are only there for ‘themselves’ and have not moved through metamorphosis to become a painting.
Sometimes I paint very fast with large brushes, and I NEED to feel the movement and my body ‘connects’ to the canvas through the energy of the movement. This way of painting creates certain marks. And another time, I paint slowly, sitting down possibly. I use a small brush, it’s more like a meditation. It reflects in the painting. I see it somewhat like an orchestra, if all the mark-making is the same, it’s like listening to just one instrument but once you start changing ‘the energy of painting’ (i.e. changing the way you apply paint) then you can hear the violins and the cello and trombone and trumpets… all sorts, it’s a very rich sound. But it’s also ok if you just only want to have a single cello! What’s important is that mark-making is not a goal in and of itself but a by-product of something greater that I’m trying to express.
Q. You describe working with form and space and using the processes of abstraction and simplification to reveal “the metaphysical dimension and to illuminate an aspect of my inner life.” Can you expand on this and discuss the relationship between figuration and abstraction in your work?
First, I’d like to clarify what we mean by metaphysical. Derived from the Greek meta ta physika (“after the things of nature”) referring to an idea, doctrine, or posited reality outside of human sense perception. In modern philosophical terminology, metaphysics refers to the studies of what cannot be reached through objective studies of material reality. It also could be understood as a concept or study to help to define reality and our understanding of it. Metaphysical studies generally seek to explain inherent or universal elements of reality which are not easily discovered or experienced in our everyday life. As such, it is concerned with explaining the features of reality that exist beyond the physical world and our immediate senses. And to this I might add another aspect in terms of how I relate to this reality and what my place in that is. So, I have no intention to represent the visual world around me. It is masterfully done already, and I would only set myself up for failure if I tried to go down that route.
What is abstraction? Another word for abstraction, could be reduction or simplification. What is important to understand is that it is abstracting from something or simplifying something. In my case it is the world around me, I am in search of my own language – a visual language to express something between the seen and imagined, something that has a fourth dimension, an emotional experience as well as visual. I seek to create my own space. I don’t wish it to resemble illusionary ‘real’ space but more of a symbolic flat space (I believe this possibly derives from the very early influence of icon painting on me). In icon painting everything has a coded meaning. Icons were created to tell a story for those who could not read the word. For instance, gold represents eternal space but unlike icons, in my paintings, there is no code. It is a world where you have to rely on your own emotional response. I look for shapes, I simplify forms in search of more powerful expression of the ‘object’. I look for colours and the special relationship which can express emotions beyond words. I look for where I can express powerfully my inner state (in all its ambiguity and complexity) through imagery and the language of painting. It’s something I can’t capture in words. In fact, I don’t fully understand it myself, it escapes me every time I come close and when I feel I can almost grasp it, it slips through my fingers and the next moment it’s further away than I ever knew. If I am perfectly honest, I don’t like it when my paintings are reduced to meaning in word. In some ways each painting is a self-portrait of sorts. It is me and my life with all its complexity and meaning. Painting is a journey which I find fascinating, very challenging and hugely exciting (amongst very many other emotions!) It also feels that I don’t really have a choice in the matter, I feel I learn and discover something every day. I guess this is the meaning for me.
Q. How has your practice changed over the years?
My practice has not really changed. I am the same. I am still painting and it’s what I do. Maybe my personal experience is becoming more intense and accepted, and the knowledge of myself a touch better. Painting is my life. But, otherwise, the way my paintings appear, in terms what they look like from outside, is likely to have changed. It went through circles, from figuration to abstraction, then to semi figuration, then they were very bound by observation and then they are, where I am now, more between the seen and imagined. And I hope they look better and more interesting. But it’s not for me to judge. It’s feels better and better.
Q. You have had the opportunity to work with Sir Anthony Caro. Can you tell me about this experience?
I never really knew at the time how fortunate I was to meet Tony Caro. I had no idea who he was. Obviously over the years I came to truly appreciate what a blessing it was to have had that chance to know him. He was very kind to me and very supportive. Maybe a bit of a grandfather-ish figure. I am trying to remember him then, back in 1989. I was 22 and fresh out of Russia with very poor command of English. I thought he could be many things. One moment Tony would appear to be very light-hearted and jolly, making a joke then suddenly he would be very serious, penetrating and intense. I remember him walking around the studio looking at other people’s work, he would stop and look for a moment and you could see that he was really looking, and then he would suggest something, something totally unexpected and it would be spot on. So brilliant! I think he was also very stubborn and proud. I remember when he invited me to come to New York, I said that I was worried because of my Russian passport. He waved me away, telling me that HE is Anthony Caro. But I am Russian, I insisted. Sure enough, Americans refused me entry and Tony pulled all his mighty efforts to turn their decision. After a great drama, when I arrived at Pine Plains, New York State, I was over the moon with excitement. As he came to greet me, I told him how worried I was, thinking I might never make it. Tony smiled and said “… but I told you… I am Anthony Caro.”
Q. You have been involved in running a number of Triangle International workshops in Africa (Zimbabwe, South Africa and Botswana) – can you tell me more about these projects?
The International Triangle Artist workshop was a wonderful idea created by Tony Caro and Robert Loder. Robert was a great friend of Tony’s and an art collector. A great Art lover. The initial idea was very much bound by three countries Canada, America and England (hence the triangle) but then it spread all over the world. It was very much due to the efforts of Robert Loder that Africa became the first destination outside the original triangle countries.
The idea of the African Triangle was to invite fifteen African local artists and fifteen artists from the UK. The basic materials, studio spaces, accommodation and meals were provided by Triangle. Artists were given an extraordinary time to work together in a kind of pressure cooker environment with a lot of interaction and discussion, trying something completely new and different from their usual studio practice. We had to select a group of people who were really hungry for that kind of experience. It is not every artist’s cup of tea. I do think it was a fantastic time, very unique and special. We tried to organise a workshop in Russia as well, and I took Tony, Robert and Jeff Lowe on a trip to Russia. Tony hated it. It was winter and possibly not the best of times to go to Moscow – it was also 1990 and Russia resembled the Wild West. The Russian Triangle never happened.
Q. Who or what have been your greatest influences as an artist? Which artists most inspire you, both contemporary practitioners and historical?
I can write a list of names of very many artists I admire; some are contemporary and some are Old Masters. And, of course, there will be names like Goya, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer.
We lived very near to the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. I loved this Museum. It was created by Ivan Tsvetaev, whose daughter became the most amazing and powerful writer and a poet, Marina Tsvetaeva. I adore her work. I loved going into the museum on my way from school and wander around the rooms but, I mostly loved going into the room on the second floor where they had a Van Gogh painting Landscape with a Carriage and a Train – a wet field with blue-green cabbages, a wet road after the rain and a train steaming away into the opposite direction on the very top horizon. I absolutely loved this painting; I could stare at it for ages. On the way home, I would visualise the painting in my mind again and again. I often would fall asleep reawakening every inch of this painting, I completely memorised it in my mind. I loved Bonnard completely and utterly too. But I think the artist who really INFLUENCED me was Philip Guston. In a true sense of the word. Not in the sense “I want to paint like him”. I guess I felt like that when I was younger and was looking at Bonnard and Cézanne. But Guston made me understand painting in a totally new way. He made me truly think of what painting is and what it can be. A whole new process. A different honesty and integrity.
Q. How significant are the elements of spontaneity and serendipity in your practice?
May I call it happy accidents? Or even accidentally deliberate moments.
I think those things are one of the best moments in the process and I am always longing for them to happen. But you can never fake, it arrives like magic always totally unexpectedly. But you have to struggle for it truly every time, and go through ‘the process’ to discover that special magic.
Q. What are the latest developments in your work?
The inner drawing. The interconnectedness within the whole painting. The inner pulls of the painting. I love working with it on a larger canvases where I can connect through my body and movement.
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