NADIA LEARNED

ARTIST BIO

Nadia is a Russian-American artist and art educator with a diverse educational background and an impressive history of living in different continents and cultures. She was born in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), the cultural capital of Russia, a city with a rich artistic tradition and the country's finest art schools.

Nadia received an exceptional art education from Serov College of Fine Art and then from Cherkassov Academy of Theatrical Arts, where she completed her MFA. She also studied traditions of Russian Avant-Garde under the leadership of Gennady Zubkov, an apprentice of Sterligov and follower of Malevich.

In early 2002, Nadia moved to the USA, where she studied and received a Master of Art Education from Rochester Institute of Technology. At this time, she was raising her daughter and was concerned about children's multicultural education. She developed a series of teaching manuals for bilingual children, part of which was published in Latvia and Russia.

In 2014, Nadia went to China to teach art in international schools. Living in Shanghai, she got interested in the Chinese ink painting technique on rice paper. She took lessons in Chinese ink painting at an art institute and participated in exhibitions of artists working with this technique. For now, she is temporarily residing in Beijing. She teaches art, works on a series of images of mythological animals, develops a new series of drawings and collages and collaborates with the Beijing Children's Literature magazines. Nadia's work has been featured in more than 50 juried exhibitions in Russia, Finland, Italy, Canada, China and the United States. She is a member of the International Federation of Artists, Union of Artists of Russia and Rochester Art Club, USA.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I want to express the depth of the moment using a minimum of media. My goal is to reproduce the first impression that strikes my eye. The first impression strikes immediately, providing minimum information. A window opening. A sea sparkle. The clear-cut silhouette of a tree. The play of the light and shade. A passing glance fixes attention on a moment, on a moment in which eternity imprints itself. I am also interested in drawing ordinary people from the countryside, and I am concerned with the harmonious interaction of man and nature. Countryside life has another rhythm. The everyday activities here take on a different meaning: completeness of vision and integrity.

I see the white color of paper as the eternal space, the Eternity, while lines and shapes are our ever-changing Life. Life is a series of fast-changing moments. A moment exists only here and now; the next second, it could be gone. But once it is on paper, it will remain forever. I love working with ink and watercolor as their washes splendidly convey a sensation of TRANQUILITY and ETERNITY, which are very important to me. But at one point, I want to get away from watercolor blurriness and accidental patches. Then I make collages. In the collage, I do not attempt to play with different materials. The most important thing for me is the refinement of form. I wanted to achieve a result so that, when looking, you understand that there is nothing more to be said. This is the only correct form at exactly found place, and there is no other possible way to resolve it.