Oil, acrylic and oil pastel on canvas, 36 × 48 in (91 × 122 cm), gallery-wrapped, 1.5 in deepRequest information
Visualization, to scale
Visualization, to scale
I paint states, not stories.
I wrote about war, and then fell silent for twenty years. Some things cannot be told. They can be painted.
All works are oil and acrylic on canvas, gallery-wrapped, 1.5 in deep.
Visualization, to scale
Visualization, to scale
Visualization, to scale
Visualization, to scale
Visualization, to scale
Quieter states. Here the white relief speaks almost alone, and light comes before color.
Visualization, to scale
Visualization, to scale
I believe in light. For me it is faith, hope, and love. It lives within us and shines ahead, like a beacon on its path. Three paintings of this series carry their Russian names: Vera, Nadezhda, Lyubov. Faith, hope, love.
The series was born in Assisi. Entering a church painted by Giotto, I encountered a blue so deep that I felt myself sinking into it. It rose into the vaults like candlelight and drew me upward. Since then I have been searching for that blue. People have searched for it for thousands of years: Babylon built the Ishtar Gate in glazed blue brick, to look like lapis lazuli, the sacred stone of heaven. In Vera that gate rises again, drawn in orange over a city at night.
But light is not only a gift; it is also a road. I began as a journalist and reported on war. Afterwards, for twenty years, I kept silent: I took any work rather than see it again. Painting is how I finally answered. I learned that light can be seen even where it is hardest to find. That is why a small figure walks through these paintings, through a city at night, through red, the color of fire and wounds, toward an opening of light.
Time, for me, is not a line. In Assisi I stood among walls eight centuries old, and past, present and future were there at once. Since then I know that one can walk without moving: go deep into the centuries while standing still, travel inward while the body stays in place. The figures in my paintings walk this way. Their road does not lead across a city. It leads inward, toward the light.
I begin with a white relief, built with a palette knife, where arches and figures appear only as shadow. Then come acrylic washes that run down the canvas, then oil, in layers, until light lives in the paint itself. Blue is for light and faith; red is for what we pass through to reach it. Sometimes a painting begins with an object: Lyubov began with a white stone shaped like a heart, crossed by a pink vein.
I see a light, and I walk toward it.
Tatyana Maccabee was born in Moscow. She studied journalism at Moscow State University and psychology at the Russian Academy of Sciences, and began as a journalist during perestroika. In 1991, as a correspondent for the Mexican newspaper El Norte, she reported from Yugoslavia at the start of the war there; the same year the paper published her interview with Mikhail Gorbachev.
After that she stopped writing. She lived in Bulgaria, Mexico, Iceland, and for twenty years in the United States, where she worked as a stylist and in jewelry: anything but a return to war reporting.
During the pandemic she began to paint, first in watercolor, then in oil. Since 2023 she has studied in the school of Elena Nenastina, through all levels. In Assisi, under the deep blue of Giotto’s frescoes, her series Following the Light began.
“In Assisi, standing under Giotto’s blue, I understood which way to go.”
Today she paints full time in Florida.
The white relief of Vera before color; the palette; lapis lazuli, ground and waiting for oil; and a stone shaped like a heart, crossed by a pink vein, where Lyubov began.
If a painting stays with you, write to me. I answer every letter myself.
For inquiries about available works, exhibitions or residencies.
studio@tatyanamaccabee.com
Instagram @tatyanamaccabee
Florida