MEET ARTIST SIMONA RUSCHEVA
Simona Ruscheva
Bulgarian painter. She fuses ancient folklore with digital aesthetics to explore the cosmic source of who we are.
The main idea that runs through all of Simona Ruscheva's work is a single question: what is our essence, and where does it come from? She looks for the answer in Bulgarian mythology, ancient history, and the embroideries, weavings and textiles her culture has preserved. But the work is not meant only for Bulgarians. She deliberately fuses two seemingly different ideas, the ancient and the digital, to create a deeper understanding of heritage, and to show how the symbols that bind a culture together are echoes of something universal, something that lives in many traditions at once.
Folklore, Mysticism, and the Digital
Ruscheva is a graduate of Fine Art Painting from Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria, now based in London. She had her first UK solo show, Transitions, in London in 2022, and her first international solo show, The Source, at Keep Contemporary Gallery in Santa Fe in 2021. Her work is heavily influenced by Bulgarian folklore, rituals and mythology, and by her interest in the visual interpretation of cosmic creation, life cycles and natural elements. These include the embroideries, weavings, ceramics and material objects that carry cultural memory.
Equally she draws inspiration from rituals and traditions, especially what she calls the magic factor. She has a deep interest in symbolism and mysticism, which are interwoven throughout her work as an underlying subject. She also takes inspiration from the digital aesthetic, which has become a part of her visual language, the gradients, the interplay of soft and sharp, the colour palettes that exist between the digital and the handmade.
My work is meant to show how rich and powerful our culture is. I like to fuse two seemingly different ideas into one to create a deeper level of understanding and appreciation of our heritage.Simona Ruscheva
In Conversation
Simona Ruscheva × Antakly Projects
Tell us about your creative process.
I usually lay out a few ideas as thumbnail sketches. I then do a photo shoot where I use them as a general guidance. That gives me a lot of reference material to use with the current ideas or new that are inspired by the photos. I then manipulate the images digitally until I am closest to my vision as I can go. Once I reach that point I start working on a canvas, and I do multiple works at once so I can switch between them when I need to. It also makes it easier to do a coherent body of work, rather than individual pieces.
What has been an interesting response you have heard to your artworks?
While my works are very inspired by my Bulgarian heritage, they are not meant to be consumed by Bulgarian audience only. In fact I aim to reach more people, who are unaware of our culture and let them in to the wonderfully rich world of symbols, motifs and colours. The most interesting responses have been exactly from such people, who are trying to pinpoint the origin of the works or notice details and parts of the works that are also present in different cultures, which all relates to the idea of the collective unconscious. One such analogy I received as a response to my works was with the recurring threads in my works and the Norns, the Fate weavers from Norse mythology.
What does well-being mean to you?
I am grateful and happy for the life I have, my family, being able to create and make a living from it. But well-being for me is more of a rational choice rather than the result of various circumstances in my life. Well-being is being able to grow and learn in my work and as a person.
The Road Before Art
Before art was a choice, Ruscheva was on a different path. She studied at a mathematical high school, where the trajectory pointed toward programming or architecture. But at fourteen or fifteen she discovered Hip Hop, and with it, graffiti. At that moment something shifted. She decided she wanted to continue with art, started going to drawing classes, where she begged her friends to model for her because there were only plaster shapes and still lifes to draw and she was craving the human form. Painting came later, when an artist friend taught her how to work with oil, and although initially the rules of the medium felt at odds with her inner perception, art school gave her the tools to understand them. Now she can consciously choose whether to follow them or not.
Well-being is being able to grow and learn in my work and as a person.Simona Ruscheva
Her work has been recognised widely. She was longlisted for the Jackson's Painting Prize in 2023 and the Holly Bush Emerging Woman Painter Prize in 2022 in the Portraiture category, and was shortlisted for the Kate Bryan art prize and Artrooms Awards. A work was Highly Commended by the De Laszlo Foundation at the Royal Institute of British Artists Annual exhibition. She is a member of Contemporary British Portrait Painters, and her works are part of the global art collection of Standard Chartered Bank.
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