Monday, July 30, 2012

The Inspirational World of Fine Art: Artist Tatiana Roulin

This week I want to share some inspiring sources. One is an interesting video that was recently shared within a licensing group on Facebook. It inspired me to dig a bit more into my own "why" I do what I do, which I simply stated to be this: "Making the world a better place through art." That's now my motto that I am using on my tearsheets, website, and so on. It feels good!

You can find the video here on TED.com: Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action.

And speaking of inspirational art, I want to introduce a new series of interviews I will be doing, which will be about fine art artists - many of us are fine art artists, illustrators and crafters in addition to being art licensing artists, so I thought this will be a fun addition to the blog for all of us.

My first interview features a wonderful artist, whose work is classic and beautiful; she is definitely doing her share of work to make the world a better place!

Fine Art Artist Tatiana Roulin
Her name is Tatiana Roulin and is an award-winning, internationally renowned New England representational painter whose primary mediums include oil, acrylic and pastel. She is a member of the Oil Painters of America (OPA) and the Pastel Society of America (PSA). She is also a member of several art associations in New England such as the North River Arts Society, Sharon Creative Arts Association, and Mansfield Art Association, to name a few.

Tatiana was born and grew up in Moscow. Eleven years ago she moved permanently to the USA where she resides with her family in the Greater Boston Area. An alumnus of Moscow Art College of Art and Graphics (summa cum laude), additionally she has been studying fine art for several years under a very well known Russian realistic oil painter, Yury Gusev. Her approach combines the classic atelier training of the "Russian Academic School" - largely based on techniques used by the Old Masters - with her own personal style expressed through the harmony of design, color and light. Currently Tatiana's art is represented by Art and Light Gallery in La Mesa (CA), Gina MW Gallery in Long Beach (CA), Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale (AZ), Off Our Wall in Amesbury (MA) and Preservation Framer in North Attleboro (MA).

© Tatiana Roulin
The Moon from My Attic: What brought you to art in the first place? I realized that I was interested in art in my childhood. It all started when I was 4 years old girl; I dreamed of being a ballet dancer. Even though I didn't exactly happen to become a ballet dancer, I'd been dancing for 15 years until I quit doing it because of many complexities my life took on. I gave up what I loved doing the most but Art has always attracted me. My family owns a huge collection of art books started by my parents. They collected art folios, beautiful luxurious art albums and I keep on expanding this collection. I think my first influence came from those books about art, artists and art museums from around the world.

TMFMA: What's exciting about your creative work? Being creative and expressing my own visions and ideas with brush strokes is an exciting thing to do. It's hard to say what's most exciting. I think the whole process is.

© Tatiana Roulin
TMFMA: Who're your top-favorite fine art artists and why? As someone who has an academic training in Fine Art I always appreciate Old School techniques in paintings. I love when painting is very well done technically and visually. I have very many favorite artists so it would be hard to name them all here but I will name a few. I love artists from different art periods, from Renaissance to Contemporary Art. I have a board on Pinterest where I post art from my favorite artists. For example, one of my favorite artists is Yuliy Yulevich (Julius) Klever (1850-1924, Russian painter), who painted absolutely amazing landscapes which are greatly done technically and very beautiful and realistically rendered.


© Tatiana Roulin
From Russia, my favorite painters include Ilya Repin (1844-1930), Apollinary  Vasnetsov (1856-1933), Viktor Vasnetsov (1848-1926), Konstantin Makovsky (1846-1920), Vasily Polenov (1844–1927), Rafail Levitsky (1847–1940), Fedor Alekseev (1753 - 1824), and Ivan Bilibin (1876-1942).
I also love artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood founded by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882, English Painter). From contemporary masters my favorite artist is Richard Schmid.

© Tatiana Roulin
TMFMA: Tell us about a recent project you'd like to share. I used to create a series of artwork. Recently I've started a new portrait series called "Russian Costumes" that will be about National Russian costumes and traditions. In this series I'd like to represent the rich culture I came from - one of my favorites from this series is titled "Girl in Russian Costume".

TMFMA: Any other important info that you'd like to share about art? This year I published my first book about my still life paintings titled "Vibrant Still Lifes". Everyone who is interested in my art can buy this book via Blurb. I'm planning to publish my next book at the end of this year, but I cannot say now what this book will be about. Maybe my next book will feature my new still life paintings or perhaps it will be about my new series of "Russian Costumes," we'll see.


More of Tatiana's paintings are below:


© Tatiana Roulin
© Tatiana Roulin
© Tatiana Roulin

1 comment:

Heidi Rand said...

Great portrait of Tatiana - loved the samples of her work that you included. Very inspiring, Alex!