Transmigrations
By:
August 14, 2021
Primarily, I consider myself a painter and graphic designer, but instead of looking for more trendy creative forms of self-expression, I have developed a new obsession in the technically tedious medium of bas-relief.
The spirit of my mother, who passed away in February of 2021, pointed me in this direction. A bas-relief is a piece of artwork that is sculpted, carved, or molded in such a manner that it barely protrudes from the background’s flat surface (see above). This artistic medium is very appropriate for the depiction of my mother’s character. Take a look:
Anna Tylkina was her name and she rose above the mediocre, soul-consuming, flat background of her typically provincial town of Orsha, situated in the Republic of Belarus in the then-huge Soviet Empire. On top of that, add the unique flavor of the Jewish shtetl, similar to Marc Chagall’s beginnings. She went through many life struggles to be different, unique, special, yet her strong connection to her background prevented her from completely cutting away at the bonds to become a free-standing sculpture.
My mother was eccentric, artistically inclined, and constantly reinventing herself. She possessed a curious mind that moved her, at the age of 90, to become an artist, and she produced drawings of flowers, birds and landscapes of her Belarus homeland daily. She managed to participate in a few local art exhibitions. I even wrote a tiny fairytale based on her butterfly drawing called “The Life of One Butterfly,” and made an audio-video presentation of our creative collaboration as a present for her 93rd birthday. She was very pleased. (See for yourself.)
Anna Tylkina was a climbing rose — but with a lot of prickly and, at times, painful thorns. She survived Stalin’s repression, WWII, the highs and lows of the Soviet Era, and immigrated to the US during perestroika. She was happy in her new place in Brooklyn, and with the Senior Center she attended and the circle of friends that she became part of. She was always the most active member in that circle, always engaging in dancing, theater, exercise and so many other things. I will continue to celebrate her life-loving spirit in my every artistic endeavor and I will add this new time-consuming art form to the test. My mother was my muse, who posed for me (even in the nude!) since I was twelve. She was a cloud-like silver bullet through my head. But I survived the shooting and that bullet has become my talisman, my good-luck charm, as I venture into the new, the unknown.
Images (top to bottom): Rose with a Spider, sculpture by Yelena Tylkina (2021); Never Off Stage, photograph by Yelena Tylkina (2017); Butterfly, drawing by Anna Tylkina (2019); Covid 19, drawing by Yelena Tylkina and Anna Tylkina (2020)
Since I also write short stories, my colorful and complex mother frequently appears as a character. You, the reader, may want to meet her there: