My training is primarily in traditional printmaking, etching and monotypes, and of course, drawing. As an art student, when I was young and stupid, I was resisting painting as much as I could, only to come to it some years later, having to learn so much by myself. I also love sculpture in all its forms, clay, stone carving and wood–but don’t get much chance to carve these days, although hope to get back to it soon. If you wake me up in the middle of the night and ask me, Dasha, what kind of artist are you? I will answer, “I am a draftsman.” Drawing for me is a way of life. I love to draw from life and I love to draw “from my head.” I use the drawing process to think, to calm down, to center. It is a way to wisdom for me.
Like meditation, drawing opens a mental/psychic space where you transcend yourself. When you draw from life, you have to disengage from your “monkey mind” and concentrate on the world of abstractions, visual relationships of shapes, sizes and gestural directions. In that state of mind, things become possible that you have not considered possible from your everyday life position, the conceptual doors open that you never knew even existed and you make mental and spiritual connections you’d never make before. It is an amazing discipline that I keep up every day. It doesn’t matter >what< you draw. It can be people in a cafe or your cats sleeping next to you, or a pair of shoes discarded by your loved one, or anything at all, sublime or mundane, does not matter. What matters is that you exercise that muscle that allows you to truly SEE. If I were the Emperor of the World, I would make Drawing a requirement for every person, along with Logic and Rhetoric.
And then you use the skills you honed while drawing from life to delve into your inner worlds, to create places and spaces that only exist inside your dreams. It is the closest we can come to sharing our dreams (so far).
When the image comes to me, from life or from imagination, then I decide what medium it is asking for. Sometimes it will stay a drawing, or become a monotype or a painting. Sometimes it is all about Light, which will utilize monotype’s strength as a medium, and sometimes it needs to be in Color and I will break out my paints. But none of it would be possible without hours, days and years of challenging myself with drawing anything I see.
The last thing I wanted to mention in this “About” piece is that I would (obviously) never had happened without my fantastic family in Russia (and now more spread around the world), the family of scientists, adventurers, survivors and super-unconventional thinkers. And my wonderful family here in the United States, where I found Love.