11 May Catching Up with Local Artist Yevgeniya Mikhailik
In the frostbitten daylight of Wexford, Ireland’s lush landscapes, Yevgeniya Mikhailik woke to pieces of freshly baked sourdough bread and hot coffee. After she ate her breakfast, she walked over to the old barn that was converted into an art studio and draw for about four hours.
During this time in Ireland, her studio work was inspired by the vast evergreen scenery that surrounded the cow-house-turned-studio that was built in 1915. For one week, she basked in the rugged terrain and mangled forestry around her at the Cow House Studios artist-in-residence program.
Mikhailik is a 33-year-old artist based in Orange County. She creates artwork that is evocative of picturesque landscapes not unlike that of Ireland’s. However, she creates art that is far more complex than ordinary landscapes. Her illustrative creations are usually a product of her own imagination rather than specific places. She attributes this to her fascination with scenery and natural topography. When her interest in these things collides with her imagination, what results is art that is like a boundless reservoir of breathtaking fantasy and mythological intrigue. Her canvases are storybooks that guide your eyes into a mystical realm that lives and breathes life.
Mikhailik thinks of the earth as a sentient being that we are both disconnected from and eternally connected to. Though humans have an inherent ability to understand the emotions of other people and creatures, they do not think of the earth in the same way. This inherent contradiction is something that captivates Mikhailik. It is a concept that has been the focal point of much of her recent art.
Her family moved to California when she was young and has called the state home ever since. Mikhailik’s artistic relatives were her earliest inspirations before she drew on Mother Nature. She had always been interested in art as a child but studying fine art at Cal State Long Beach was what solidified the passion for her.
“Places and relationship to places has always been very fascinating to me because there’s this really rich history in relocating constantly, and taking these little bits and pieces of places with you wherever you go,” she told us in an interview.
During her stay in Ireland, she discovered the ancient Irish burial grounds that predate the Iron Age. They became the focus of her art-in-residency. She described them as having a ditch that circled around the mound, replicating the look of a ripple in water. She made a series of drawings that were the result of her impression of these natural landmarks fused with her philosophy of the earth’s emotive structure.
Mikhailik created the series to look like the mound was cascading into a whirlpool the closer the viewer gets to the artwork. The effect of the art is almost jarring. The liquid graphite slowly oozes and spirals inside of the mound, the landscape seems to teem with life.
Her most artistically challenging piece of art, however, was a piece she completed last year entitled A Slow Conflict.
The artwork was the title piece of an exhibition that Mikhailik had at Cal State Fullerton’s Grand Central Art Center. It is a massive four-by-twenty-foot abstract landscape drawing that engulfs viewers with a vague narrative that is rooted in the idea of evolution.
Light red and beige melt down the paper, forming the nooks and crannies of a mountainous abstraction. It sits on a raven-colored background that bleeds into the mountains like a landslide. Mikhailik’s attention to detail demands the viewers take the piece in segments, a metaphor for the finite nature of human life.
“[It] was a culmination of several months of thinking about deep time, the history and the evolution of our planet, the current state of things, and the overall trajectory we are on,” she said.
A Slow Conflict examines the way that the earth, an ever-changing being, evolves under the influence of humans. When it was on display at Grand Central Art Center, it was accompanied by several smaller artworks that explored the same concept. Mikhailik refers to these pieces as “human bodies” that emphasize the true magnitude of A Slow Conflict.
The artist spent a long time studying this particular subject matter, and as a result she sees the piece as the vehicle for her artistic growth in the studio.
To Mikhailik, the hardest part about being an artist is trying to find time to elaborate on her ideas in the studio. She now leads a busy life as a part-time lecturer who teaches studio classes, but things like her artist-in-residence trip to Ireland allow her to return to her creative process.
Her artwork disregards notions of gender and focuses purely on the life and soul of her subjects within her sphere of creative influence. She chooses to weave intricate narratives that make people question the connection between their everyday lives and the natural world, whether it be with the folktale animals of her past work or the abstract landscapes of her present work.
“Once you put a label on something it’s so hard to get rid of it,” she said. “We all evolve, all of the time.”
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