Lena's Website: https://lena-art.weebly.com/
"From the garden" 2018 Oil on linen mounted on wood
Lena Chermoshniuk is an accomplished painter who studied under Israel Hershberg in the Jerusalem Studio School. I encountered her work shortly after going to the JSS in Civita Master Class in 2017. You can view her CV here: https://lena-art.weebly.com/about.html.
Laura Vahlberg: Hi Lena! Thanks so much for agreeing to this interview. So I understand you are a tattoo artist and a painter. How do those two art practices inform each other? Which art form came first for you?
Lena Chermoshniuk: I was always interested in tattoo art, but I was definitely a painter before. I've actually started tattooing quite a few years after finishing school. My big challenge was to bring my drawing and painting to my tattoos, to make them look more like drawing, like art, and less like standard art tattoos. I don't think there's an influence in the other direction.
LV: I love the sense of atmosphere you have in your paintings. Can you talk about how you accomplish that feeling of air in your pictures?
LC: That's a big question... I guess Israel Hershberg was always talking about air in painting, and how the sky starts at the tip of your nose. That makes you realize air is a substance, it has volume, it changes the way things look through layers of it. I remember trying so hard to achieve that feeling of air during my first time in Italy. I think it has a lot to do with colour harmony, and as to landscape painting in particular, the realization that everything has some of the colour of the sky in it. Maybe also me working with a rather limited tonal range, and having a bit of a grayish palette makes you feel that air. I like subdued colour, delicate variations, close tonal range. I actually don't consider myself as someone who's creating a lot of space in their painting, I usually choose closer, almost two dimensional motifs when painting outside, I think more of the surface of the painting then of creating this Alberti style window (https://federicoart.wordpress.com/2015/07/10/17/) to some reality. I like to condense space against the paintings' surface.
LV: Yes I can feel that sense of condensed space- the tactile air between your motif and the surface of the painting. I’m curious about how you mix your colors and how many colors you use- do you have a pile of gray paint from a previous painting session that you use to mix in your colors?
LC: I don't believe in limiting your palette, I have quite a lot of colors on mine, and I always like to try out new ones. My favorite at the moment is sap green, which I only discovered a few years ago, it's this beautiful warm, transparent, green that can be used to enrich almost any color. When I mix colors I don't usually think of the color itself, but more about temperature, vibrance and value- do I want it warmer or cooler, is it more of a live or a "dead" color, is it darker or lighter. I also try to compare everything to everything else, so as to create a relationship in my painting, that sense of everything being in the same air and atmosphere. It's rare that I will use some of the grey paint from the pile on my palette because I don't want to begin with a muddy color, so I will only use it if I really need that muddiness. Usually I prefer to mix some kind of gray from a few colors that contradict each other, make it in the value I need it to be and then play with the adjustments, cool it down or warm it up with a cooler or warmer color. If I want to brighten a color I will usually mix in some white mixed with another color, because white will automatically cool, and "kill", the color if mixed by itself. I think the most important thing is the temperature, that's what excites me most in paintings, the small variations in temperature, so I pay the most attention to it.
And here's a picture of my palette, as you asked. It's rather messy and dusty, sorry about that. The powder near the white paint is marble powder which I sometimes use to make the paint thicker or more opaque.
LV: Thanks for that window into your process. What does a typical studio day look like for you? Do you paint every day?
LC: Unfortunately these days I don't paint that often. I have a lot of work, and I'm studying for a b.a. in philosophy and arts. I do try to paint at least on the weekends, and more when my schedule allows. I don't really have a typical studio day I can speak of. My ideal studio day would be to start with some small sketch, either a transcription, or an invented composition, then go on to a big painting I'm working on, or starting something new. If I'm feeling a bit lost, I would start with organizing my studio, going through old paintings I might work on some more, looking through books and such.
LV: Fascinating! Do you find that your studies in philosophy and arts influence your painting and/or your tattoo art?
LC: Not really, it just means I have less painting time at the moment. I'm not a cerebral painter, I don't really think when I paint, at least not in the same way as when I'm reading philosophy. I do think it's important to develop oneself as a person, and that it can be seen in one's paintings, but I can't speak of any direct link between theory and the actual practice of painting as far as my art is concerned. As to tattooing, most of my work is developed to the clients request so my part is mostly the visual and aesthetic, not the conceptual.
LV: Do you have any advice you might offer to an artist starting on their journey?
LC: Well, that's quite a big question, there are so many things I could say. I think most of all, it's important to be patient. Don't try to make a beautiful painting, don't try to succeed, just try to look and to enjoy the process. I think a good thing is to make a lot of studies from old masters, they will be your best teachers. Small studies are like a laboratory, you can really try things, explore. It doesn't make you feel as committed as a larger painting might do, so you can be freer, more creative even, and then you bring that energy to the larger, or more "serious" paintings. Also, I find it extremely important to try and understand the meaning of composition, which master copies will help with. I think for me it was the biggest struggle, to really let go of the figurative, to be committed to the painting, to the composition, rather than the thing I was painting. I guess letting go of some aspirations is an important part of the process, as well as gaining new ones. I was afraid to try things out, and I'm sorry about not being bolder as a student. Also read "Hawthorne on Painting".
LV: You mentioned before that you don't think of yourself as a painter who is creating a lot of space in your painting and that you think more of the surface of the painting. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
LC: I think less of creating space because I don't really think of a painting in the Albertian way, of it being a window to a reality. I'm interested more in the surface of it, in the inner divisions of the square. I love early renaissance paintings, manuscript illustrations and Persian and Indian miniature paintings, which have this rather flat surface, and strange sense of space, so I guess they have a big influence on me. I do think of space and air but I can't say it's my main concern, it's more about the shapes and divisions. When I would go out painting I would always find myself drawn by close motifs that make for a rather flat painting, as well as motifs with a close tonal range, so with time I realized these are my interests more than creating this vast airy landscapes. This is probably why I do more cityscapes and buildings.
LV: Thank you for the clarification, I think I understand better. I also wanted to ask you about making transcriptions from the old masters. Are there any masters you recommend copying? Also, how would you go about making a copy?
LC: So about copying- the masters I copy the most are Piero Della Francesca, Caravaggio, Titian, Corot, early Italian renaissance masters like Giotto and Lorenzetti and Degas. I think the reason to copy, or rather make studies, of old master paintings is to learn something from them, so the best thing to do is to find the ones you like the most, the ones you would want to paint like, or have a certain quality you would like to have in your own painting, and do studies from them. Do small sketches, charcoal studies, color sketches, just don't try to copy the painting as it is, there's no point in that. Making a study after someone's work allows you an insight into their thought process, into the way they look and make decisions, it provides you with an opportunity to engage in a close relationship with them in a way studying about an artist will never do.
The other thing about these studies is that they provide you with a kind of experimental playground. Somehow these studies make you feel less committed, less serious, than when you are facing a still life or a portrait for example. I feel I can experiment more with studies after the masters, push the colors further, try combinations I would normally be afraid of and generally make more of a mess. The pressure of making a "good" painting isn't there, because it's not your painting anyway.
Also, transcriptions are not something you only do as a student and that's it, it's something worth doing as a continuous practice. When I'm in the studio and have no idea what to do, or stuck on the painting or just generally uninspired it always helps.
I also recommend looking at Balthus's studies of Piero, and Picasso's studies of Velasquez to see some good examples of the way these great painters interpreted old master works.
LV: Thank you for these replies! I just have 2 more questions.
Do you premix several colors before you start painting or do you mix one color at a time? Or a different process altogether?
When you're making a copy do you use an image for reference on a screen like your phone or computer or an image on paper? Does it matter to you?
LC: I have simple answers for both of those. I never premix colors. I look and react, I mix the colors I see and try to make them work together, which means I have to change them and adjust all the time. I think a good painting gives the feeling of the painter being surprised by what they discovered about the world through the act of observation and painting, so I find pre-mixing to be the opposite of letting oneself be surprised, the opposite of exploring.
When I'm making a copy I use whatever I have available, be it a reproduction in a book, from the internet, or a photo I took myself. I do find it more convenient working from a book, but it doesn't matter that much. As I explained in my previous answer about copying, it's never about making a copy, or a reproduction, of the painting, and sometimes less information is even more helpful to see the big picture and to not get caught up in the details. Anyway, even in a good quality reproduction, you never get the actual colors of the painting, so when making a color study one has to invent.