BIO

I was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria- the place where my love for art began at an early age. I have been interested in art from the time I was a young girl, and set about to learn as much as possible. My mother often involved me helping with the art projects she created for the school that she taught at.

At the age of 13 I studied drawing for three years with a well respected teacher in Sofia, Bulgaria. I learned watercolor technique with another as well.

I graduated from a Textile Technical School at the age of 18. I spent a long time studying drawing, and developing my personal style. When I came to the US my plan was to study painting. I’ve always been interested in color. I went to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where three disciplines were available as majors: painting, printmaking and sculpture.

The first year offered an introduction to each of them. From those classes I realized that printmaking provided me with enough variety of mediums to really be able to express myself in my personal visual language. Printmaking can incorporate painterly techniques as in monotypes and some woodcuts. Yet, much of it uses drawing that translates onto relief, engraving, etching and lithography very naturally.

I am very grateful that I can dedicate a big part of my time and energy into something that I knew I wanted to do since I was a kid.

ARTISTS STATEMENT

The magic of orchestrating color, mark making, and pressing the image on the paper gives me the feeling of freedom to visually express ideas created in my mind. In my artwork I use different printmaking techniques, and drawings as well. It varies from miniature wood engravings and mezzotints to large scale woodcuts, monotypes and etchings. My inspiration stems from old traditions and everyday stories, people, images and sounds. These translate into a variety of detailed art forms spanning from realistic images, to abstract.

Woodcut is a process, where I am in constant communication with the wooden plate. The scent and the texture of the wood brings me warmth and peace, and carries me to a quiet moment, and connects me to the universe.

Monotype is a single impression of a painterly technique. It allows me to break away from the detailed woodcut work. Sometimes it is well planned and layered which creates more depth to the image. Other times I am spontaneously allowing my mind and my hand to reveal the power of color and ink onto the plate. It creates a moment of freeness, a feeling of movement and rhythm, often with some element of surprise.

I also like to incorporate multiple mediums, monotype, drawing and relief in my work. This gives the ability to combine textures, and techniques to create forms that are more involved, and contain more depth in the images.