artist interview
(left) Apples, 2009, 26”x40” on paper; (previous) Untitled #2, 2009, 26”x40” on paper.
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How did you like working with him? I loved working with him. I remember that I couldn’t really understand his German because of his heavy Russian accent, so we would just
What did you learn from that experience? Living in the States without my family forced me to become aware and responsible of my actions, independent and at the same time it gave me room to really get to know myself, to start to be introspective. Those three years at art high school were very defining years.
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You have lived and studied in different places and institutions. How have your studies varied with the different locations? I grew up in Switzerland where my curiosity of art first started. When I was little I was always out in nature exploring and creating things out of stuff I found in the woods. When I got a little older I got very interested in learning how to represent nature through drawing, painting, and sculpting. That’s when I started to take drawing and painting lessons from Russian artist Juri Borodachev, who became my art mentor up until I left for the States.
communicate through the work. What that taught me is how much communication power art actually has. Unfortunately besides Juri and my parents who were supportive, school teachers and parents of friends would be quite discouraging about me wanting to become an artist. They all were trying to steer my passion into just being a hobby. I was not feeling that. I convinced my parents that it would be the right thing for me to go the U.S. to this art school that family friends had told us about. They were supportive and let me go. I was sixteen when I left Switzerland to go study art at an art high school outside of Boston. There I got really into oils.
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What inspires you? At this point all things that can’t be controlled but that can be influenced. That relationship interests me.
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