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| In the expectations of a Miracle - 40cm x 50cm |
Moscow-born Eugenia Vronskaya had an interesting early introduction to the world of art. Here is an excerpt from some reflections she wrote for the gallery. Her next major show is here at Kilmorack from the 11th July - 9th August.
‘My very first work of art was made at the age of five. I was on a visit to my Grandfather who was a General in the army and a big scary man with a deep voice. He had large leather armchairs in his study, which was where I was left when the adults did important things. I found a pair of scissors and cut out a silhouette of a wolf from the back of an armchair. Wolves were my favourite at a time and I believed that I was one in a previous life. When grandpa saw me and the holes in the armchairs, he was angry. I thought he was going to murder me. But once he saw the wolf, he was suddenly impressed, asked if he could have it… and spared my life.
Four years after this, I was sent to a barely legal experimental icon-painting school. I hated it, but that’s where I learned my skills in fresco and icon painting. They taught us how to make our own brushes, paints and grounds in the traditional school of egg tempera, techniques going back to the Middle Ages and earlier. I left this place at the age of 13 and announced to my parents that I was to become an artist. Shortly after this the school was closed and most of the teachers given twenty-four hours to leave the country.
The icon painting I learned there was a disciplined and predetermined type of painting. One to follow a set of very strict rules, so when I finally started to paint my ‘own way,’ it was like opening a flood gate. I was crazed. Painting as all I did and wanted to do, day-in and day-out. My mind was set.
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| on the river - oil on canvas - 183cm x 153cm |
There was this fantastic Art School in Moscow. It was founded in the 1920s by wonderful people like Malevich, Larionov, Khlebnikov and Gancharova, and I was not interested in going anywhere else, even though I was far too young to get in. I applied anyway and had to sit eight rigorous exams in drawing, painting, composition, illustration, history of Art and the history of the Communist Party. Miraculously (and I’m sure by mistake) I was accepted. On the first day of the University, the director asked me to stand up in front of hundreds of students to announce that I was the youngest ever to be accepted in the Moscow School of Art.’
Eugenia Vronskaya, 2012
Vronskaya studied there for six years. After this she took on her own studio in Moscow, had sell out shows, studied in at the Royal College of art in London, and eventually moved to the Scottish Highlands. An extraordinary life for an extraordinary artist.
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