Natalia Strukova from Smolensk paints paintings at the bottom of the sea

Natalia Strukova from Smolensk paints at the bottom of the sea. Scuba diving, she takes canvases and oil paints with her and paints landscapes of the world hidden from the eyes of most of us.
By the way, the pioneer of underwater painting was one of the members of the Cousteau team - Andre Laban. Natalia scuba mastered 25 years ago, and paints underwater for ten years.

For her first underwater plein air, the artist took a factory canvas, but... it turned out that not everything is so simple:

“In the Black Sea, I also tried to paint under water,” she said. - All right, except I got a factory canvas with a gelatin primer. And when I surfaced, the painting began to separate and float away. Now I'm laying pictures on my "recipe."
The expectation of inspiration at the bottom is limited by the amount of air in the cylinders. Close to the surface, you can draw an hour and a half or two, but if you dive deeper, then sometimes only 10-15 minutes are allotted to work. But painted in great depth landscapes like Natalia more.

“The fact is that in the water from the visible spectrum disappears red color,” says the artist. Jacques-Yves Cousteau noticed it when his injured finger was bleeding green. Most of the time, red objects appear brown. The real color is only visible when illuminated with a flashlight. And my paints look different underwater, too. I paint as I see it, but in the air the colors are very different. Painting works like a slow-motion flashlight. My brightest painting is painted at a depth of 15 meters – there is a lot of red and orange on it.

Natalia has already managed to capture the underwater world of the Black, Red, Mediterranean and South China seas. There were also freshwater “experiences”, for example, at the bottom of the Desnogorsk reservoir.
Residents of the underwater kingdom relate to the work of Natalia with great interest:

“In the Black Sea, swallowfish are surrounded by flocks and taste paint. And sea dogs and shrimp are laid in groups on the palette. You have to move them carefully to get the paint. Once, a butterfly fish set up a hunt for a red rope tied to my mastichin (an artistic instrument with which a painter applies paint to a canvas).

In the land part of life, Natalia Strukova teaches to draw children and adults who go to her studio.

Recently, Natalia held an underwater exhibition. And another one is already in Smolensk, in our Headquarters, and to see the paintings, equipment is not required: come and see this magic!

And on September 20 at 20:00 there will be a meeting with the artist and a concert of her friend – a bard from Bryansk Sergey Kuskov.

Photo from the archives of Natalia Strukova