Polina Isakharova is the artist of our upcoming exhibition “The Garden” and the opening will be on the 30th of August at 19:00.
The artist shares with us the following:
“I have just turned 30 years old. I am an artist, a teacher, a director and most of all a human. I was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan and emigrated to Toronto, Canada with my family in 1996. During my teenage years my visual art and drama teachers (Troy Fogg and Lazaros Geronikolos) inspired and nourished my creativity. From age 15-18 my high school art teacher gave me extra time and freedom to explore in all my art projects and even let me borrow the grade 9 and 10 students to paint backdrops for the play I co-directed with Mr. Geronikolos. Laz and Troy set my artistic foundation. I flourished and gained confidence as an artist because of their inspiration and support. During my 20’s I discovered the art that I had learned about as a teen by visiting galleries around the world: New York, Seattle, Boston, London, Amsterdam, Nice, Barcelona, Prague, Athens, Vienna, Budapest and many more. The Renaissance is my favorite time period which is why visiting Rome and Florence was an absolute dream come true.
Throughout my twenties I took creative risks from having my own art shows, traveling around Europe, to living on two different islands. Becoming an adult gave me space to grow into the person I wished to be and not the person I was taught to be. It’s funny I should say that when I myself am a teacher. I love teaching. It’s why I became an artist. At the Rudolf Steiner Center, where I was studying to be a Waldorf Teacher, my professor said we needed to learn how to do chalk drawings on the chalkboard. These drawings were the means to connect the children to the subject being taught. When I started playing with chalk pastels on a chalk board the artist in me was born again. After studying Theater at York University for four years I had become a perfectionist and had no desire to paint. In front of a chalkboard I rediscovered the joy in drawing as everything could be easily erased, not like a white canvas. For the last seven years I have loved drawing on chalkboards in classrooms.
Just before my first teaching job on Vancouver Island I had a solo art exhibition “Happily Ever After”(July 2014) in downtown Toronto where I created my own chalk boards to draw on. The massive art piece “The Higher Self and the Body” from my first show, now hangs in the dance department in York University. In 2015 I started the riskier route of playing with oil paints, which taught me patience. My second solo exhibit in 2016, “Dancing with Divine” showcased my oil on canvas paintings of dancers. After living in Duncan, British Columbia for three years I moved to Limassol, Cyprus to help open the first Waldorf School (Limassol Waldorf School). Moving to Limassol and being a part of the school has been my greatest dream realized. However, it is now time for me to return back home to Canada but before I go I have two gifts of love for Cyprus: A Midsummer’s Night Dream at Curium (July 23-25) that I am directing and my art show “The Garden” (July 30-August 1). “
