I am good with observational drawing and paintings and pushing towards finding your own language through the process of painting and abstracting, simplifying.
“I am the tree and I am the horse and I am that figure. I am the paints and the colour and every mark and brushstroke, every thought, doubt, joy and failure”.
I was brought up in Moscow and in 1989 I moved to London, before relocating to the Scottish Highlands, where I was based for 22 years. Living in the countryside, close to nature, changed my life and enabled me to embark on a journey of deep discovery into the interconnectedness of all things. Being alone in nature, surrounded by the wilderness, riding a horse or simply walking, the sunlit nights of May and June, swimming in the lochs at night or in the rain – I experienced a profound sense of belonging and completeness, of being one with the world. It is this embodiment of experience which is a central focus of my work.
Artist Statement
I don’t really like to describe or name what I do in my paintings; I find it restricting and limiting and also not quite true. What I enjoy about my way of painting is ambiguity, where things become and dissolve, and ‘meaning’ travels through many incarnations. It is a bit like poetry, which has its own language, and the attempt to describe a poem drains the magic away. But if I have to describe my work in words, I would say that my paintings come from personal experiences, by which I mean inner experiences,- a split moment, a taste of something more than what meets the eye, a parallel reality moment. A sort of time out of time.I feel strongly connected to early man who lived in caves and chose to paint and draw on the walls. Through these drawings he established a spiritual and mythical connection to the invisible realm. I trace this tradition throughout art history; I feel a particularly strong connection to Russian icon painting which I studied from an early age.
For me, the starting point comes from observation of a physical reality, but as I continue to work, the process of painting itself takes over. The method is not fixed – it can be quite messy, illogical, confusing and irrational, but also intuitive, leading to a place where dreams and the subconscious meet. I search for the image, an image which is half observed and half experienced. I look for inner movement in the painting. It goes through many stages; I work with runny translucent layers, drawing and redrawing again and again, layering multiple glazes, using pigments, and printing cut out shapes into the painting. The work is slow and intricate, joyous and full of rage too. The painting goes through many stages, sometimes including boredom. I watch the painting constantly from the corner of my eye. It can be very frustrating and long. It is as if I am trying to catch a black cat in a pitch dark room – I know it’s there, because it has brushed up against my hand a few times…
Eugenie’s EXPERTISE
Listed below are this Mentor’s specialty skills. Join this group if you want to grow in these areas.
Specialty: ✔ Artistic Process & Mindset ✔ Color ✔ Composition
Technical:
Z
Color & Composition
Z
Teaching How to Self Critique
Z
Providing Art Critiques
Business:
Z
Studio Time Management
“Mastrius is a perfect balance of accountability, community and fun. It feels like family. Family that makes you a better you.” ~ Elizabeth, Emerging Artist
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Next session: September 16, 2024
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MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST
Eugenie Vronskaya describes her painting technique as ‘drawing with colour’. Through the movement and physicality of her medium, she seeks to express her emotional response to her subject, rather than to imitate reality. Often, she’ll focus on a central image—a horse, a tree, a figure—which she then flattens, borrowing from her knowledge of icon painting. She says: ‘I work with form and space, abstracting and simplifying in order to reveal the metaphysical dimension and to communicate something about my own ‘inner visson’.
The resulting works have a meditative, otherworldly quality. Vronskaya describes them as ‘autobiographical, but not in a documentary sense—rather as the emotional and spiritual response to my environment. The Scottish Highlands, where I have lived since 1998, have had the biggest impact on my life and work. Riding or walking alone in the wilds, swimming in lochs and rivers in the rain, seeing the sunlit midsummer nights and hearing the primal roar of Autumnal stags: these and so many other experiences have given me an elemental connection with the natural world and an overwhelming sense of the beauty and harmony of creation. I am part of it and I see my work as the embodiment of that.’
Vronskaya’s painting has evolved over a forty-year career from the figurative style of her Moscow training, through her abstract early London years, semi-figurative Royal College of Art works and return to fully representational portraits and still lifes in the early 2000s, to the romanticism of her present style, which first emerged in her John Martin Gallery exhibition in London in 2015. Since then, her name has become synonymous with mystical landscapes and dream-like visions featuring horses—a particularly strong, recurring symbol—and bathing figures, often self-portraits. Many feature in her beautiful book Eugenie Vronskaya; Sleepwalker, published in 2021.
She has exhibited widely and her work is held in public and private collections, including Tate, the V & A, the Pushkin Museum and the collection of Ruth Borchard.
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