Tatiana Melnikova

Tatiana Melnikova was born in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Tatiana’s academic training in art began at age 10 when she started attending a traditional Russian art school, where students get acquainted with art history and practice the foundations of classical art. Later, she continued her art practice and education at the Ural State University of Architecture and Arts, majoring in the history and theory of visual culture. After receiving both a bachelor’s and master’s degree, she came to the United States in 2014 to study Russian literature and culture in a graduate program at The Ohio State University. Focusing on the representation of artists and art in Russian literature and cinema, Tatiana is particularly interested in how writers and directors of different eras depict the nature of artistic inspiration and the role of artists in society through their respective literary and cinematic narratives. In 2018, after ten years studying the theory and history of art, she rediscovered her love for the practice of art and returned to her roots of painting and drawing. 

Currently Tatiana is interested in the theme of life, its cyclicality, and femininity. She expresses these themes through images of the human figure, fruits, and vegetables. She works in mixed media, often using pencils and watercolor. Watercolor’s essence combines the laws of nature and the human experience: watercolor’s unpredictability, volatility, and fluidity epitomize uniqueness and liberating changeability, whereas pencils are a more precise, controlled material used to accentuate details.