Love with a sprinkling of empathy of souls – the intimate world of Daniela Russeva and the works she exhibits in the galleries of Plovdiv.

Her latest works, on show on 16 November at the White House cultural centre in Plovdiv’s old town are made using… wine. The exhibition is called Crimson. To make them she didn’t apply paint or pigments or any other artistic material artists use, she used only organic material such as pure cotton, water, wine slag and pencil.

“The idea to use wine for making pictures came to me at a fashion show in the old town,” says Daniela Russeva. “Together with a group of artists I tried to paint using wine lees on used filters and it gave me genuine pleasure. So, I decided to experiment and, alongside my painted canvases, I started making wine-drawings.”

Connoisseurs say that her miniatures are candid, straightforward and lyrical, that Daniela has discovered one more intoxicating function of wine:

“With wine we fall in love, with wine we love one another, with wine we can draw,” she says. “It is all a matter of sentience. The stories I tell and the titles of my pictures are provocatively colourful, tying passion, love and wine in one knot – “Words and wine”, “Love and wine”, “Angel”, “Draw me a tear”, “The three muses”.

There are times when one paints out of anguish and other times – out of happiness. Whatever her emotional state, Daniela Russeva opens up her soul to the limit, without shame, sharing her deepest secrets. As though flown back to her childhood on the wings of time, she invariably chooses streamlined forms and simple colours to set her memories down on paper.

Identifying with Pippi Longstocking, the character in the book by Astrid Lindgren that all children love so much, Daniela says she too is a thing-finder:

“Yes, mine is a creative spirit always on the lookout to experiment, at least my friends say so,” says Daniela. “Even when I go to the beach I am liable to find a pebble or some other thing and immediately feel it is “my thing”. That is why I am a thing-finder – what I want is to discover a world that is much simpler and primeval, a world where I can live and work. But that is so difficult, so I shall keep looking.”

In the classroom of the high school in Plovdiv where Daniela Russeva teaches art, standing looking at the easel or walking along paths untrodden, she is ever the thing-finder.

English version: Milena Daynova 

Photos: courtesy of Daniela Russeva