We had the good fortune of connecting with Tatiana Zaytseva and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Tatiana, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
I do art because I can’t help but do it. This is a part of me, this is real me. Once I realized that you don’t need have an art background to be an artist, it changed my life. I found myself. I started to love myself. I became proud of myself. I realized that all my life I took a long way to art. I was walking around feeling something, but I could not realize and accept that I could be an artist. I thought, if I’m not as brilliant as Leonardo or Van Gogh, then there’s nothing to try. However, I have always been interested in art, its history. Everything that I created, I tried to bring to perfection and make it aesthetic, unusual, beautiful.
And then Covid arrived.
I get some free time and I decided to spend it on studying the history of art. This was my turning point. After a course in the history of contemporary art, I realized that it is not necessary to have an academic education for making art.
And I started trying. Different techniques, different materials, different styles. And everything worked out for me, and I liked it more and more. Sometimes an idea came to my mind, and I began to think it over, then study, analyze and then make tests. When I understood how it could be implemented, I did it. For 3 years I tried many different techniques, and each time I built and developed them myself – the lack of art education affected here – I had to reinvent the wheel every time. But actually, this was the most interesting for me – it became important part of my creative process.
In less than 2 years, I began to participate in collective exhibitions of one small gallery in Miami. In parallel with this, I applied for participation in the Spectrum Art fair during Miami Art week. There I met some artists and gallerists, one of whom became my official representative, and still is. I participated in many exhibitions with them: Art Expo New York, Art Santa Fe, Art Dallas, Red Dot and Context in Miami. My paintings are now sold not only in the USA. I am very pleased with the dynamics of my art career.
In conclusion, I will say that of course it is very important when someone believes in you, sees your talent and potential. However, the most important thing is to believe in yourself, not to be afraid to make mistakes, not to be afraid to try, not to be afraid to be different from everyone else and not to do like everyone else. This is what creativity is about. And art is a pure act of creation.
And it’s incredibly cool!!

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Seeing myself as postmodern artist with no rules, except of my aesthetic view of the world, I experiment shape, material and color. Takes key artists ‘works’ to analyze, transform or show in my own view. Engaged in artistic search, self-improvement and creation, two points distinguish my work: texture and color. By exploring experiencing and studying them, my multi-layered, multi-textured, multi-colored works ‘play’ diverse media to balance between them, coming to unite all parts in a single holistic image. In my art, form becomes work content and content becomes form. My philosophical aesthetic education ruled my art formation to analyze, research, master, modify or combine artistic or non-artistic media.
Of all the many art techniques I tried, my favorite has become mixed media.
Working with various materials and objects, recycling, mixing, changing their properties – is what drives my work. Different textures, their combinations, their relationship with color and light – all these intrigue me a lot. I enjoy working on each of my art pieces starting from the initial idea till its final result. When out of chaos, from just a set of media and colors, a clear structure starts to grow, when an image that was only in my imagination becomes reality.
I usually choose one dominant media I create my special artistic technique for it, and give this media new form and new context, I create a dialog between media and concept.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Miami is a great city that offers a lot of natural, cultural, culinary, night options. Beautiful beaches, Everglades, nice restaurants and shows. Being the artist I usually take my friends to my favorite art places in Miami: PAMM, Super Blue, Rubell Museum.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
The best support I ever had was from my family and especially my husband. They believe in me and help me a lot. Also my gallery Contemporary Art project and its director Tata Fernandez was leading my career growth during last 2 years.

Website: www.tatianazaytseva.com

Instagram: @tzvisualartist

Image Credits
All images by Tatiana Zaytseva.

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