The Journey Of An Artist

Art has always been much more than just making images for me. I truly believe that it exists everywhere: in architecture, cinema, the color of evening light, human emotions, everyday details and random moments that we often do not notice. For me, art is closely related to the ability to see beauty in small things, which means the ability to be happier, more attentive and feel the world more deeply.

My career in art began long before my art education. My father used to work as a cameraman, but today he is a film director and producer. As a child, I watched the process of making movies: filming, editing, casting, costumes and visual solutions. He often showed me his work, told me about the behind-the-scenes processes and this probably became one of the main sources of my interest in visual culture. At the same time, I drew a lot, sculpted and made something with my own hands and gradually the desire to connect my life with the visual world became stronger. Later, my parents saw this interest and sent me to the Russian Art Academy, where I studied for seven years. It was an intense journey filled with painting, drawing, portraits, art history, copying famous works, researching various artistic techniques and rigorous screenings. We formed our own artistic community, and practice occupied a huge part of our lives. Later, my path continued through studying graphic design, photography, cinema, contemporary art and studying visual culture at the university. Today, I no longer create art on a regular basis, but I continue to photograph, attend exhibitions, analyze the visual environment and look for art in everyday life.

However, the artistic path is rarely simple. One of the most familiar problems for me has always been the fear of a blank sheet — the moment when you have a blank canvas in front of you, and it’s scary to start because there’s a risk of doing it “imperfectly.” Over time, I realized that making a mistake is not the opposite of good work, but part of the creative process. Perfectionism has also often become an obstacle: the desire to control every detail can be useful in academic drawing, but it does not always help in more free artistic styles. Another challenge was tight deadlines, a huge amount of work and anxiety before screenings. It was then that I realized how important time management, discipline, and the ability to relax and not compare my path with someone else’s are for an artist.

If I needed to give some advice to aspiring artists, I would start with a simple one: study different styles, artists and art trends, create moodboards, experiment with materials and don’t be afraid to look for your own aesthetics. Practice as much as possible, observe real life, draw nature, city, people, photograph details, learn to notice the unusual in the familiar. And most importantly, don’t be afraid of mistakes. Sometimes they become the starting point for the formation of their own artistic language. Ultimately, my path in art has taught me not only to create, but also to observe. And perhaps it is the ability to notice beauty, explore visual culture and remain open to new art forms that remains the most important part of this journey for me.

In this post, I also want to share some of my old projects created during my studies at the art academy and at the Faculty of Design. For me, this is not just an archive of works, but a kind of traces of a creative path — with all the experiments, mistakes, the search for my own style and moments of growth. Perhaps some of the readers are currently at a similar stage: just learning, doubting, looking for their own direction or trying to understand their own visual language. If these works can inspire, support or remind someone that the artistic path is rarely perfect, then they continue to live not only as part of my experience, but also as part of a common creative dialogue.

ART NEARBY.

Written by Anastasia Kiper.