"Was born in Russia and came to University of Alaska Fairbanks on Athletic scholarship where she studied English Literature. She took a drawing class by accident when she ran out of English courses to take and since then has been painting and drawing. She continued studying art at Parsons in New York, but after missing Alaska too much, came back to Fairbanks. After two more attempts to break the cord she now lives in Hillsboro Oregon and works for Pacific University as an Instructional designer. the job puts the food on the table, the art pacifies the soul. She wishes she painted more."
I was an undergraduate at University of Alaska Fairbanks in their BFA program when I met Tatiana. I made an instant connection with her that has spanned a friendship lasting 13 years. She and I were both passionately committed painters when I met her, and I greatly admired her figurative paintings which were bold and gutsy and quite large. After all these years, I see the way time has crept into her work and given that gutsiness the kind of teeth we never really know how we will attain when we are younger artists. There is much good in this work because it seems to lay foundations for future travels. Here is our interview.
1. can you talk about where you were when you started this body of work? what was your motivation?
Since I’ve moved to Oregon I have been missing Alaska a lot, so I have been talking to an artist friend of mine who is still in Alaska trying to make sense of the nostalgia and not knowing what to do with it. Out of these conversations came out a collaboration, an exchange of artwork (still ongoing). She sent me some pieces and asked me to add to them, then send them back. At first it was just that, like exchanging postcards from different places. When you work with another artist the process is very thoughtful and careful because you have to respect the work as you add your own voice to it without demolishing the integrity of the piece as it was. It became almost meditative. I have always been a very “fast” painter and also very physical — I did a large-scale abstracts for a while that were based on movement and a moment, and the emotional state I was in. It was almost like a workout. Get it all out and quickly. The collaboration made me step back. So, these new pieces became an extension of what I had put into the joined work, the continuation of thought, meditation, and mark-making.
2. How do you see the work now on the other side of this process or experience, how do you see your self?
I don’t really believe that there is a “yourself” in a singular form. There are many selves in each of us. Working on these pieces brought out a more peaceful side to light without obliterating the other “selves.”
In a way, this work as a finished product does not really mean much to me because it became all about the process, making marks, remembering a part of me that is Russian, part that is Alaskan, some other parts too — the skeletons are made of bones :) I am not attached to it as I used to be attached to the pieces before, And it is quiet liberating. I don’t think I got to the other side of this process yet. I’d like to stay there for a bit. I like it there. It’s my “pinnecolada on a beach.”
3. What do you see yourself pulling away from this series as you move forward?
Well, as I said before, I used to "drive" very fast, now I drive more like an Oregonian — 5 mile under speed limit (no offense). When you slow down you are able to notice more. And this is exactly what is happening with these pieces. I started paying attention to detail. It almost all become about the details. I am obsessed with details and mark-making. That is why, i think, it has this highly decorative feel to it. These pieces did not come out of beforehand ideas. They came out of making a mark, line, shape and continuing to form it into a detail, a part of something. It is a backward process and is driven more by curiosity of what will happen if I add more marks, lines, shapes... what story will I find there in the process.
4. Can you talk about your experience being an outsider? I tend to see artists as outsiders par excellence, but being an outsider can mean a lot of things. For instance, I see both of us as being outsiders to this place (Portland and Oregon), and we offer very different perspectives, especially in our creative work. How has that experience informed your creative work?
I have been an outsider much longer than I have been an artist. Come to think of it, since I was 7 years old. I am a military brat, lived all over the place — Europe (where I was an outsider because I was Russian), Russia (because I lived in Europe all my childhood before actually living in Russia), then Alaska, New York, California, now Oregon. Moved a lot, never really stayed anywhere for long until I found myself in Alaska, staying for 20 years (which is why I call it home). These experiences make you detach, disassociate not only from places and people, but from your own self. There is a beauty in being detached because as in driving slow, you notice more, even if it is un-intentional. I used to feel like a Peeping Tom when I was still learning English and people saw me as a deaf-mute. I have learned a lot of secrets then :) This experience is actually now starting to come up in my work through masks and bones and amalgamations of parts, species, cultures, symbols…
4. We have both spent some time in Alaska. How has Alaska shaped who you are as an artist and how you see this place, Oregon?
Well, Alaska is home. Oregon.. I do not know what Oregon is yet. I have only lived here for a couple of years, so I am still very very very much a detached outsider :) It’s a beautiful place. I love the coast, the Gorge. After living in Alaska for so long I still smirk at “Keep Portland Weird” slogan. I have good and bad experiences like in any place. This morning on a way to work I saw a guy sitting in a car on a side of a road. I stopped — purely Alaskan reflex — and asked if he was OK. He told me to fuck off. Clearly he was a California transplant.
Only after I moved away from Alaska did I realize what a different breed of a person I am, all Alaskan’s are (and you know I am not exaggerating) — fearsly (is it a word?) self-sufficient, independent to the point of reclusiveness, taking 5 minute showers (and not because i want to help save the Earth, but because after living in a dry cabin and showering in laundromats with 5min water-run limits for years it became a habit), always packing a sleeping bag and a set of warm clothes and boots in my car, ignoring “stay on the trail” signs on hikes… those sorts of funny things that don’t make sense to others here...
As far as being influenced by it as an artist… I think Alaska shaped me as a person, definitely. I really don’t know if it did as an artist. I think artistic influences are so complicated, they are a conglomeration of experiences that don’t necessarily tie to a place (at least not for me). Artists are complicated… As Nietzsche put it, “No one is simply a painter; all are archeologists, psychologists, theatrical producers of this or that recollection or theory.” While I lived in Alaska learning how to be an artist I was influenced by all these big, brilliant, famous, dead, unreachable idols like Rothko, Chagall, Kandinsky — incidentally all Russian— because I was missing Russia. Now that I moved away, Alaska does creep in my latest work — derivatives of totems, Alaska Native art elements… because I miss it. But I don’t think as an artist I was different between then and now. I am still an “archeologist, psychologist, theatrical producer” only with a different zip code.
5. You mentioned you worked intuitively on this series, which you said was something very new to you. For me, that signifies giving up control. I feel that work that comes from an intuitive place is relegated to a secondary status in the art world, that any work that privileges the subjective over the collective, any work that has an internal logic as opposed to a visible and explicit rational is seen as retrograde, old fashioned, unimportant, whatever...can you talk about working intuitively and what that means to you?
This is a super loaded question :) People can make entire academic careers out of trying to ruminate on this one (and probably have). I think throughout the entire art history the hierarchy of statuses changed a lot. Art scene is like a woman with too many gloves.
My work has never been intellectual. It has always been visceral. It changed from trying to attack and cover up the canvas into constructing something out of seemingly non-compatible, non-sensical pieces. Both were lead by an intuition, but in a very different way. Going through the process of creating these latest pieces showed me how much I like un-control: I like accidents, I like surprises, I like discoveries (especially discoveries). Artistically, I trust my subconscious to bring me to the right place and I enjoy the journey to get there.
I do work intuitively. It does not mean my work is empty. Behind all these gut feelings and decorative elements my work is also a very clear derivative of cultural juxtapositions I have encountered throughout my life. It lies in the schism between Russian and American, Alaska bush and cosmopolitan, funny and dramatic, pretentious and unpretentious (to name a few). It is a narrative of life in-between. It also makes fun of myself as a cultural juxtaposition. Turns out Russian American in reality is not as smoothly joined adjective as it was intended to be by “politically-correct” champions. If it seems “unimportant” to some, I can live with that -- my work does not have an ambition to "make it" into the realm of "visibly rational." Rational is boring to me.
This exhibit will be up at Looking Glass Gallery in the neighborhood of St Johns in Portland, Oregon for the entire month of October. In November, we welcome painter Steve Storz from Gallup New Mexico and in December local journalist and artist Denis Theriault. The gallery is located inside St. Johns Booksellers.
Looking Glass Gallery@ St Johns Booksellers
(971) 888-0793
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