Tatiana Levchenko

Man 1, 120x55cm, oil on canvas

For me, the creative process is not an aesthetic act, but rather research. I have been looking for my own way to reconstruct the spiritual body. For years I have been employing two creative methods that I would, following Wassily Kandinsky, call "impressions" and "improvisation". I love working from nature while allowing myself a certain state of freedom from the necessity of literally documenting what I see, nonetheless, my presence at a sight at a moment remains its great importance. Wassily Kandinsky in his work Concerning the Spiritual in Art calls these states "impressions". I get inspired by the texture and energy of the human body, its gracefulness, and the pulsation of a biological form. At such a moment, I work under the impression of momentary emotions, trusting in gesture, in my mood, and my sense of color. The second approach is psychological diving, when I immerse myself in my intuitive, letting my hand follow up the spontaneous and visualizing it. Kandinsky defines this method as "improvisation". For me, the bizarre interaction of social stereotypes, behavior patterns, and natural reactions in the depth of the human subconscious remains a mystery. Where is a genuine me? How much "white" and how much "black" are inside my consciousness? What is the dark side of my nature? How to distinct my true nature from a product of upbringing, of the traditions of my family, the society, the era? Maybe this "black" side is not so awful as it is widely assumed, but, on the contrary, the most valuable le noir gilt, the most precious gift, and this "white" cannot be taken as my identity at all, but barely as a matrix, a mold created by the social system? In my creative practice, I work on solving this problem primarily for my own self utilizing various techniques and materials. Even working in the open air, I try finding out about the inner, hidden structure of the surrounding space…