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Nadia Kisseleva |
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Biography |
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Nadia Kisseleva was born in Russia and consequently brought up under influence of Russian culture and heritage. She got her formal training at Ryazan College of Art and the Academy of Art in Leningrad. In 1980 she left Russia for Africa and since then she has been travelling extensively to different countries and continents.
After 16 years in Kenya, she moved with her family to the United Kingdom. African experience has been a major influence on Nadia's work. It provided the development of vivid and intense colour palette and the strong dramatic contrasts in her paintings. It also introduced a number of new themes into her artistic practice. However, it is her extensive travelling that has exposed her to a heritage and culture of different peoples and subsequently shaped her colourful and lively personality and her exceptional vision.
Nadia's paintings are easily recognisable in style and strongly reflect her individuality - spontaneous, daring and expressive. She continuously questions not only the perimeters of the recognized artistic practices, but she also try to challenge the already established norms and attitudes of culture and society. One of her ongoing themes is 'The Female Nude', where Nadia challenges the traditional cliché of 'a male artist painting a female nude'. 'My nudes are sensual, confident and completely free and uninhabited in their nudity of 'a male artists' gaze' - she comments further: 'Male gaze over the nude model is strongly connected with the possessiveness. My nudes are the females who are very much in charge of their own integrity and free of this kind of possessiveness'.
In her landscapes Nadia has been challenging the traditional representation of landscapes as 'The window in the wall'. In her recent work the paintings come of the wall like boxes rather then like frames with painted surfaces. This concept has been able to create the conflict, where the physicality of three-dimensional box is confronted by the illusion of depth. This illusion, in turn, has been achieved by the multiple application of paint, rather then by use of the perspective rules.
Although her work takes her around the world, Nadia admits that Birmingham has a very special place in her heart. 'It is a place where I was set on road of profound self innovation as an artist. My study in UCE, Bournville, opened a new way of working in different media, and, most impotently, helped me to establish a totally different approach to the process of painting.' She also admits: 'I realised that to achieve a further growth and development in my work I must continuously challenge it, even if it is already has been successful and popular. However, this challenge has to be constructive, not distractive.'
The instant success of Nadia's work has quickly established her reputation as an innovative artist not only in Birmingham, but as far as London. In the year 2003 she moved to London to continue her studies, this time in Wimbledon School of Art, University of London. Nadia expressed her experience of that time as the most exiting period where she was exposed to a lot of different influences, enormous amount of information and a great variety of ideas. She described the time within the walls of Wimbledon School of Art as: 'It made me a better artist, if not a better painter'.
Nadia has taken part in numerous group exhibitions (over two hundred) and had over a dozen of successful solo shows in the UK and outside. Her work can be found in private collections in United States, United Kingdom, Kenya, Denmark and other counters. At present Nadia is working in Birmingham and continues to travel frequently to the places and countries that feed her eager imagination and provide her with new impressions, discoveries and sightings.