Today we’d like to introduce you to Tatiana Zaytseva.
Hi Tatiana, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
Art become for me a successful completion of my search for myself. Actually, Covid helped me with this. For many people, it was a turning point in life. Covid made it possible to stop rushing all the time, to stop and reflect on life and oneself, and to do new things that used to be put off all the time for later. The first thing I did was sign up for online courses in art history and contemporary art history. The last one changed my view on art, the role, and self-determination of the artist. I stopped thinking that if I don’t have an art education, I can’t do art seriously. I realized that no one forbids me to try, and it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks about it, except for myself. So, I started experimenting with different techniques and materials. Then I fund two favorite media the fabric and the epoxy resin.
A year and a half later, I already participated in Miami Art Week 2021 at solo exhibition on the Spectrum Art Fair and at the same time, I began to participate in collective exhibitions at White’s Gallery (Miami).
After Spectrum, I met Contemporary Art Projects USA with whom I still successfully work. In 2022, I participated in Art Expo New York, The Other Art Fair Chicago, Art Santa Fe, Art Expo Dallas, my works are on permanent display at Contemporary Art Projects USA (Miami), as well as in various galleries in several states. Just recently, Bergdorf & Goodman New York approved my paintings for their new art project.
You can learn more about me and my art on my website www.tatianazaytseva.com and on my Instagram page @tzvisualartist.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
As I don’t have special art education, I become a self-taught artist. I had to do a lot of investigations before starting to develop my new ideas. Especially when I had to incorporate new media in my work. But in the same time, I enjoy this process: research, analyze, try and then improve.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Engaged in artistic search, self-improvement, and creation, two points distinguish my work: texture and color. By exploring experiencing and studying them, my multi-layered, multi-textured, multi-colored works ‘play’ diverse media to balance between them, coming to unite all parts in a single holistic image. My art form becomes work content and content becomes form. My philosophical and aesthetic education ruled my art formation to analyze, research, master, modify or combine artistic or non-artistic media.
Of all the many art techniques I tried, my favorite has become mixed media.
Working with various materials and objects, recycling, mixing, changing their properties – is what drives my work. Different textures, their combinations, their relationship with color and light – all these intrigues me a lot. I enjoy working on each of my art pieces starting from the initial idea till its final result. When out of chaos, from just a set of media and colors, a clear structure starts to grow, when an image that was only in my imagination becomes reality – this is how I can describe my creative process.
Changing the material, its basic qualities, such as hardening of fabrics, mixing materials and media to obtain new materials or effects, are all part of my artistic process, which later finds expression in the artist’s works. I believe that due to the lack of academic art education, I can permit myself all these art pranks, puns, and even sometimes madness. I am not kept within the framework of any canons; I do not adhere to classical and non-classical techniques. Sometimes I just want to work with some specific material, explore its physical properties and transform them into aesthetic ones. And I do it. For example, I take an old sheet and fill it with cement, glue, or resin – it dries and hardens, I can reshape it, paint it, cut it, knit it, stretch it or wrinkle it. I can mix with other materials and give it countless shapes. Actually, this is how my art series “Old Sheet” was born.
I think that when an artist creates art for the sake of himself and for the art, because he cannot do otherwise when he does not seek to imitate those who sell a lot or just follow fashion, but wants to express himself, show his view of things, the world, people, etc. this is what makes him different from the others. I follow this principle in my work.
We’re always looking for the lessons that can be learned in any situation, including tragic ones like the Covid-19 crisis. Are there any lessons you’ve learned that you can share?
As I mentioned before Covid bring me a great discovery: first of myself, my hidden abilities and talents, my self-confidence.
Then all that time was a time of reflection on the life, determination of the priorities of life, family, love, and much much more.
For me it wasn’t crisis – it was a begging of new life.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.tatianazaytseva.com
- Instagram: @tzvisualartist
- Facebook: @tzvisualartist
- Other: https://foundwork.art/artists/tatianazaytseva
Image Credits
Tatiana Zaytseva
