NATALIYA GURSHMAN
MASTER ARTIST
Unlock Your Artistic Potential
Mentorship is the fastest way to go from where you are today, to where you want to be!
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Mentoring Aspiring Artists
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MEDIUMS: Acrylic | Charcoal | Drawing | Oil
SPECIALTY: ✔ Color ✔ Composition ✔ Palette knife
I am a professional artist and a teacher, and I love mentoring and exploring techniques with my students. I am very strong in color relationships and thrive to instill the good creative taste into my students. Students learn how to create unified paintings full of energy and texture. I was trained academically back in Eastern Europe and can teach the basics of that in both drawing and painting, but my expressive painterly oil technique is much more unique. I use a palette knife and occasionally combine that with the brush, the end result looks luscious. My students will have demos and then experiment on their own with me during the sessions and at home. We will have critiques and I will mentor them through the processes, challenges and make them feel at ease with me and the technique itself.
Nataliya’s EXPERTISE
Listed below are this Mentor’s specialty skills. Join this group if you want to grow in these areas.
Specialty: ✔ Color ✔ Composition ✔ Palette knife
Technique:
Color & Composition
Technique Demos
Providing Art Critiques
“Mastrius is a perfect balance of accountability, community and fun.
It feels like family. Family that makes you a better you.”
~ Elizabeth, Emerging Artist
MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST
I am a very intuitive and emotional being, and my art reflects that. I create my work in a single breath, without any pause, so that I do not lose any drop of that inspiration. I am so caught up in the moment of creation that I forget where I am—nothing can distract me from this euphoria. Whatever I am painting, I must be in love with my subject. Lately, I have been attracted to nature even more and create my impression of the subject that reflect my background and my emotional state at the moment by utilizing new artistic techniques. I choose bold brush strokes of opaque lights to express my energy juxtaposed against transparent, cooler shadows, and I scrape some translucency into the mysterious darks with the palette knife. Since I grew up in the northern part of the former Soviet Union, in the beautiful city of Leningrad, winter and snow were a big part of my life. I keep coming back to it more often than not. Some pieces are more realistic, while others are more abstract. However, I express my energy and love for snow equally well in both. Many of my works are inspired either by a real place or my childhood memories and emotions.
It is a gratifying feeling once the painting is done—I exhale, feel hungry, and happy but totally exhausted mentally. The feeling of accomplishment fills me up: “all the hard work hasn’t been wasted – I can paint, I can do this well!”