Visual Strolls
seasonal residency
Visual Strolls is a residency space for artists who share an affinity for landscapes and wilderness, inner and outer. Foresta is changing with every season as the real forest does. In cyclical circularity it celebrates changing seasons of nature and of our lives. As snow melts away, as days grow longer, as leaves change colour, as they fly with the wind, as stillness settles in, as warmth returns, as birds cross continents — at the turn of each seasonal moment we invite a different artist to bring a new time of the year to Foresta by creating a portrait of time that later becomes part of the permanent Museum of Seasons.
Spring 2019 Artist in Residence
Olya Leontieva
Olya is a visual artist based in Moscow. Tenderness and sensitivity in the way Olya perceives and expresses her impressions of nature moved us to invite her to bring this year’s delicate spring to Foresta.
Spring 2019 Portrait
“Я чувствую очень сильную связь с природой, с погодой, с временем суток. Всегда, каждый день, каждую минуту. Мне нужен свет, мне нужен воздух, мне нужен лес. Я достаточно много времени провожу в лесу, и хорошо его помню и понимаю, и он теперь со мной всегда. Просто нужно найти к нему дорогу.
Живя в городе, я очень устаю от прямых линий и гладких поверхностей. И часто чувствую, что мне нужен отдых. Я внимательно смотрю на ветку, лист или лимон и весь большой лес возвращается ко мне.
Лес дал мне как художнику бесконечно важное - язык на котором я рисую. Цвет и ритм. Всегда разный, живой неравномерный, неровный. Чёткого плана нет и не может быть. Штрихи, движения, колыхания травы и веток, шорох и шелест. Мягкость, шероховатость - невероятная разнообразная фактура. Гладкое, колючее, шершавое. Одновременно, почти неосязаемое - как звук или танец, и при этом очень тактильное.
Всё это постепенно стало моим набором слов и знаков, и теперь даже если я рисую чашку или портрет, там всегда есть лес. Кажется, я вижу и чувствую и пересказываю мир именно через призму леса, который всегда у меня внутри.”
“I feel a very strong connection with nature, with the weather, with time of day. Always, every day, every minute. I need light, I need air, I need the forest. I spend a lot of time in the forest, and I remember it well and understand it, and now it is always with me. I need to find my way to it again and again.
Living in the city, I am very tired of straight lines and smooth surfaces. And I often feel that I need to rest. I look carefully at a branch, a leaf or a lemon, and the whole big forest comes back to me.
The forest gave me, as an artist, an infinitely important language in which I draw. Color and rhythm. Always different, lively, uneven, erratic. There is no clear plan and there cannot be one. Streaks, movements, swaying of grass and branches, rustling and bustling. Softness, roughness - an incredible variety of texture. Smooth, prickly, rough. Simultaneously, almost intangible - as a sound or dance, and thus very tactile.
All this gradually became my set of words and signs, and now even if I draw a cup or a portrait, there is always a forest. It seems that I see and feel and share my world through the prism of the forest, which is always inside me.”
About Visual Strolls
Visual Strolls is not only an online gallery, an exhibition room, a portrait into the work of the invited artist. It is also a part of our long-term research, understanding arts and creativity as forces that change human states of attention in manifold ways, as forms of cognition and perception, divergent perspectives and poetry of vision, access to intuition and imagination, and empowerment for conscious creation of culture. You can read more about Art into Life research here.
Cover image: Olya Leontieva