To look at an oil painting by Irina Fedishina is to look into a dream. The figures seem to be in touch with the physical and yet apart from it. The colors are ethereal and the compositions deceptively simple. There’s a feeling of melancholy mixed with serenity here. It’s like being transported to another world. According to Fedishina, that’s precisely the point.

Though Fedishina has a background in portrait painting (it’s interesting to note that one of her painting is in the royal collection of Queen of England), her most recent paintings focus on a single figure, usually a girl, always barefoot. Unlike portraiture, these paintings are windows into another life, a life composed of an amalgamation of memory and symbolism, harkening back to Fedishina’s childhood. The paintings are not reproductions of her memories, insists Fedishina, but a representation of them. They symbolize what growing up in the Ukraine meant. “You don’t need much to be happy,” says Fedishina. “That’s the focus of these works.”

Background
Growing up, Fedishina was heavily influenced by the museums in her native country. Art was respected in the former Soviet Union. “We had many institutions of art. Kiev is the city of three million people. It was an important cultural center. We had exhibits from all over the world, Paris, New York, Rome. People would stand out in the snow and wait for hours to be able to see the shows, including me.”

Fedishina found particular connection with art before 1900, especially the paintings of French artist Adolphe William Bouguereau. “I love his paintings.” But the voyage to becoming a painter herself was circuitous.

Fedishina was originally a chemist. She met her husband, a sound engineer from Santa Cruz, California, at concert in Kiev. They later married and moved to the United States where Fedishina began to paint. “It was hard to start,” says Fedishina, “because art schools were not teaching what I wanted to learn.” She found she had to learn from books and tutelage of Flemishstyle painter and friend, Alexei Antonov.“I bought every book on the market on the techniques of the old masters,” says Fedishina. “I started with four colors and a brush I bought on sale and had many consultations with Alexei.” Diligence and practice paid off. Her paintings have been described by the Duchess of York as “breathtaking.” In the hands of mostly private collectors, her work is now beginning to draw attention from a wider audience.

Technique
Fedishina paints using a time consuming system of her own creation, layering six to seven oil glazes, a technique influenced by the work of Maxwell Parish. Glazing, she feels, adds depth to the painting. “I treat a painting like a script, visualizing how I want the picture to be before I begin work. Then I sketch from a model.” When she’s satisfied she has a complete picture, she begins to work, drawing in pencil on canvas, then filling in. She begins to paint the form first, then the background, one color at a time. Each glaze takes two to three days to dry. White can take four days or longer. Fedishina lets each glaze dry completely before beginning the next layer. A single painting takes about a month to paint. The results, however, are well worth the effort.