Page 21 - The Digital Cloth Issue 6

Super-Fast Forward: I was lucky to
collaborate with international brands
and companies, and work on exciting
projects learning and perfecting the
techniques along the way.
With my first paper artwork ‘Yulia’,

I, unknowingly, invented Quilling
from scratch for myself (I never even
heard the term Quilling before my
work started to appear on internet).
It turned out that my method is not
really the same as traditional Quilling:
the key difference is that I use heavy
paper or card which I shape and
manipulate any way I want to, as if I’m
drawing or painting with paper strips
(instead of rolling thin paper into basic

shapes).

Painting with paper means
imitating brushstrokes with tightly
packed strips of paper, achieved by
combining different colour strips in
a similar way as mixing paints on a
palette. This new technique comes as

close to the real painting as possible,
but with added quality of a third
dimension. Obviously combining
coloured paper strips in this manner
won’t give you a smooth new colour
that you can get when mixing paints,
it is more of an optical illusion
explained by limits of the human eye’s
ability to perceive alternating colour
stripes — at a certain distance the
eye struggles to discern
individual stripes and begins to In my art it is all about paper; I buy and collect paper My current interest lies in conveying a learned (and, of course, continue learning)

perceive the new blended colour as from everywhere in search for as many colour deeper emotional complexity into paper about quilling and paper art. This is not a
a whole. Creating a tight stroke-like varieties as possible, so most of the storage space artworks; I feel a new urge in choosing my project-based book, what I’m trying to
shape (or pack) is simple: bend a is filled with full size sheets of paper, paper cut into subject matter: it feels that depicting just a encourage through sharing my experience and
strip or several strips together multiple strips (in most cases I cut paper by hand) and paper beautiful flower, a pretty shell or a practical advice, is creative freedom: we
times alternating the direction of the strips rolled into different circles. My tools are decorative wave on it own is simply ‘not create in order to feel joy from making
bend (if you let go of the strip at this basic things that you can find around the house: I use enough’… A human presence is needed to something beautiful with our own hands. This
point, you’ll get a zig zag shape); dip a firm cocktail straw (to curl and shape paper) and deepen the visual experience, the feel & feeling of joy is many times stronger when you
it into a puddle of glue (I use PVA), wooden toothpicks to roll circles or coils, also PVA emotional charge coming from the artwork, create art inspired by something that moves

place onto the background surface glue, scissors and tweezers – that’s pretty much it. so I end up combining the natural motifs you deeply as a person. That’s why it is im-
and secure with a clip until the glue Nature is my infinite source of inspiration whether I’m with human faces (ultimately we all are part portant not to get stuck and develop a habit of
dries completely. looking what to depict or just need a visual reference of nature). In my book Painting with Paper: always needing somebody else to outline and
for choosing a colour palette. Paper on the Edge I share everything I’ve plan every creative decision for you (like in