The Road Painting by Olga Shagina

In January 1980 a ten year old ballet student in the Moscow Hall of Young Pioneers was peering through the keyhole of the sculpture class when someone opened the door and caught her a fearsome blow to the forehead. The teacher, worried that on the next occasion she might be knocked senseless, told her "If you want to learn art, you had better do it on this side of the door". And thus began the art career of Olga Shagina; first at the Pioneer hall, then at Moscow's Children's Art school Number One and private studios. Every day after school she attended extra-curricular art classes at one or another institute and on some days more then one. This regime continued after school to the age of 16 and after work from the age of 16 to 18. All this was in preparation to enter the famous Stroganov Art Institute which generally required preparatory training at a special school from the age of 6. Four years had been lost and somehow had to be regained. She gained admittance (having first spent two years employed in the Institute library) to the faculty of Art Restoration. Training in the Institute comprised Theory of Restoration, Practical Restoration, Drawing, Painting, Composition, Art History, Chemistry, History of Ornament and Iconography. Two thirds of this study was spent on drawing and painting and, as Olga puts it with suitable ambiguity "I had such a wonderful teacher of painting that I gave up everything else".

Olga excelled at the Institute. Early training in Mathematics and Philosophy and an interest in archeology gave her a fresh approach to art, not altogether conventional and not altogether popular at the Faculty of Restoration. It soon became clear that Olga's interest in painting was not for the purposes of restoration and the faculty became worried that one of their flock was definitely a black sheep. "They were unhappy with the direction of my mind."

Already at 19 Olga had had a number of exhibitions, first with friends, and then alone. Painting became her life, she painted day and night, led an almost monastic life and exhibited when she got hungry. Living space, let alone studio space, was hard to find and she lived for a time on the rooftop of a student hostel. Eventually crafty dealers were finding buyers in Tokyo, Los Angeles and Bonn and Olga enjoyed a period of affluence unknown to friends and family in Moscow.

Olga Shagina does not talk much about her work, "It is like music" she explains, "or love, you can't explain it with words, you can only experience it."

Still, the art critic must try. So one tries to corner her with questions about who influenced her, what was in her mind at the time of painting, who did she most admire.

"In the beginning I, like all art students, tried to become proficient at making on canvas realistic representation of real objects; first a piece of fruit, and pot, and piece of material; then more difficult 'still lifes' with more difficult subjects like sculpture heads, real heads, figur...

• Nationality: RUSSIA
• Date of birth : 1970
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Russian Contemporary Artists

The Artist was highlighted in an article in Artmajeur Magazine:

Olga Shagina Interview