Porcelain Clown and Gummy Egg, 6” x 6”, Oil on Panel
Growing up in the shadow of the Hermitage Museum, home of the largest collection of paintings in the world, and the Russian Museum might be intimidating to some future artists, but not Anna Katalkina. She spent her youth immersed in the beauty of St. Petersburg and some of the world’s greatest art with frequent visits to the museums, the ballet and the opera. This early exposure to classical culture informed her aesthetic sensibilities and continues to influence her approach to art. Contemporary Still Life: Candy and Mementos, her January 2020 show at Touchstone Gallery, combines a virtuoso display of classic oil painting technique with the stage craft of the Russian theater in a thoroughly modern and often humorous interpretation of memory and nostalgia.
Katalkina’s small jewels—the paintings are all 6” x 6”—depict keepsakes, some hers and some belonging to friends, paired with candy and arranged as if onstage against a black hole of a background. “People collect mementos,” she says. “Often they are tchotchkes, worthless in themselves but precious to the owners because of what they represent.” Why candy? “Children are drawn to candy, and we are the same with our tchotchkes. When we travel, we see something that we associate with a happy moment, for example, a trip to Greece. I see an owl, and I am like a child wanting candy. I want the owl, because when it is on my shelf later, it will be a sweet reminder of this wonderful trip.”
Seeds Planted in Russia…
When Katalkina was growing up in Russia, her mother worked as a cultural liaison for an organization that welcomed the officers of western merchant ships arriving in St. Petersburg. Fluent in German and French and extremely knowledgeable about the city, its museums and other attractions, she introduced the visitors to the culture and beauty of the city. By the time Katalkina was of school age, her mother was introducing Anna as well. “We lived in the city center, which is what you see in postcards,” she says. “I grew up surrounded by beauty. It was just part of my life.” She especially loved the theater and was fascinated with staging. “It still affects me and my work,” she says. “I go to an opera or ballet here often specifically to see the staging.”
As she was coming of age, she and her friends would create art together or go to museums at every opportunity. “We were like semi-hippies, without the bad stuff,” she says. “We painted guitar backs and cardboard and whatever we had just between the girlfriends. We didn’t exhibit. It was just expressing what we felt. It was inspirational, it was very poetic, and we were really high on art.” She was drawn to the Dutch masters, and the collection at the Hermitage was one of her favorite places to visit.
Still, Katalkina was not thinking of a career in art. Instead, she chose to study languages.
…Bloom in the U.S.
Asian Cat and Candy, 6” x 6”, Oil on Panel
After living in London for three years, she moved to Alabama, where she was awarded scholarships to the University of Alabama at Birmingham to participate in the Interdisciplinary Honors Program and to complete her study in French Romantic literature. Simultaneously, she took art classes and found her first art mentor, Prof. Gary Chapman. An excellent artist and teacher, he encouraged her interest in oil painting and challenged her to become a better painter.
After Katalkina moved to the D.C. area, a friend introduced her to the late Robert White, a Winchester, Virginia artist, who had been an apprentice to Jacques Maroger and was expert in the Maroger, or indirect, oil painting technique. Maroger, who restored paintings at the Louvre in the early 1900s, recreated the method and materials used by Dutch artists in the 16th and 17th centuries. The approach calls for multiple layers of extremely thin glazes of translucent or semi-translucent paint.
She knew she was in the right place when her first assignment was to copy a painting by Vermeer. White gave her a panel, some paint and a photo of a Vermeer street scene, then set her to work. She loved it. “It was a private studio, and it was like stepping back in time,” she says. White produced the paints, which included extremely toxic materials, himself.
Katalkina eventually went on to study the same techniques using safer, commercially available materials at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, under the guidance of Profs. Leslie Exton and Judy Southerland. While she is proficient with direct painting techniques, she has come to prefer the indirect approach for its precision and ability to give life and depth to her paintings.
A Painstaking Process Expresses Complex Thought
Red Hippo and Green Lime Jellybean, 6” x 6”, Oil on Canvas
Katalkina’s work is process-driven, and the Maroger technique is a very important part of the process. “If you look at my work, it is very smooth, but it is also very three dimensional,” she says. “You don’t see any brushstrokes.” Each painting has 25 to 30 layers of very thin paint. The layering of the glazes creates a luminous surface, which is almost like stained glass, and a depth of color not readily obtainable from a tube. For example, instead of using black paint, she layers seven different pigments to produce a deep, vibrant dark background that almost feels alive.
Katalkina must wait a day or two between each application of paint. Consequently, she works on several paintings at a time. It takes one to two months to complete even a small painting, one reason she prefers the small format. “I don’t know if I will be able to use this technique for a larger painting,” she says. “It would be too time-consuming and too precious.”
While the traditional technique is an important part of the finished result, the paintings are also cerebral and very modern. “Each painting is planned, and nothing is spontaneous. I have to know where everything is going, because with this technique, you cannot make a mistake,” Katalkina says. The images are precisely rendered, but the overall effect can be quite abstract, despite the realistic nature of the objects depicted, and humorous as well. “There is a part of the theater in them. I stage the objects to tell a story. If the subject is a clay duck, then there are jelly beans. It looks like the duck is onstage preparing to have a feast.”
Despite the humor, she hopes that people do not call her work cute. “I like to make people smile, but there is much more to it than that,” she says.
An Artist with Purpose
Being able to show her work at Touchstone has provided Katalkina with a concrete goal for having a show and a date to achieve it. “It makes me work for a purpose,” she says. “It helps me grow as an artist.” She also appreciates being part of a community of artists and the opportunity to exchange ideas with others. “If you are sitting in the studio and not talking to anyone, it is not good for the soul, and it is not good for the art.”
With Candy and Mementos, Katalkina connects something old with a fresh, new viewpoint. She balances seriousness and humor, elegance and simplicity, tradition and modernity. It is good for the soul. It is good art.
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