MOSCOW, December 29. /TASS Correspondent Irina Skalina/. Images of cute owls on paper scraps brought fame to Inga Paltzer from Severodvinsk. The owls quite unexpectedly became famous all over the world and their independent lives began. The author returned to the profession of a biologist and presently is working on the Museum of the White Sea's visitor center. She makes drawings for books. Inga's works are about the beauty in dark March, in the northern jellyfish, and in great bitterns hooting on the White Sea coasts.
Museum as creative space
We meet Inga on a very frosty December day. The White Sea off the Yagry Island has frozen, and a strip of ice-free leaden-gray water can be seen far away. Frost-covered trees are hugging the pink building of the Severodvinsk Museum of Local History, which resembles a gingerbread house.
- This is one of the oldest buildings in Severodvinsk, the artist says. - Can you see a rosehip flower in the center of the stained glass window? It is the symbol of our city.
Inga has been working as a researcher at the Severodvinsk Museum of Local History for a year. She was invited to create a new museum - the White Sea visitor center. The visitor center with panoramic windows will be on the Jagry Island. The museum will be dedicated to the sea: its coasts, waters and inhabitants - birds, fish and seals, and also to geology, paleontology and various other natural things.
- It took them about five minutes to persuade me to join the museum - the offer seemed too interesting and cool to me, - Inga smiles.
Not only submarines
Severodvinsk, on the White Sea, is known practically just for submarines. They are built and repaired at huge local enterprises. The city's almost all museum expositions are about submarines. Inga is sort of unhappy about it, saying well, yes, the submarines of course, but there are so many interesting things around, and incomparably too little attention to them, she says.
- At first glance, our White Sea seems small, cold and icy, and even polluted in some places. Thus, one of the biggest tasks the new museum is facing is to demonstrate that our sea is very, very rich. To show that there are a lot of things, even on our Jagry Island. Even if you just walk and watch where you are walking, you will make incredible discoveries and will be surprised.
Though officially the visitor center has not been opened, the staff makes tours and master classes. They continue working on the collections, prepare equipment and design souvenirs. Inga focuses on the marine component, and her colleague, an ornithologist, is responsible for birds.
Inga, a fragile girl with big eyes, slightly resembles some of her fairy-tale characters.
- Right, quite often people tell me I am drawing myself. Perhaps it's true at times, as anyway many of my works are, let's say, personalized - they have features of the people I know. But again, I draw portraits only very rarely. Normally, they are like this, - Inga shows a drawing of a cheerful otter in a jumper. - This, for example, is my friend, who is happy to buy another sweater, he loves to buy them. Such are the portraits I make.
Those cute owls
The first of the owls, the ones that later on became famous all over the world, appeared in late 2011. Inga drew them just for herself, not on regular paper, but simply on scraps. She says normally she's quite pedantic and the so-called creative disorder is not typical for her. For example, when cutting out figures for a composition, she sorts all cuts and fragments to use them in other works. Inga began drawing those owls on pieces of pastel tinted paper. They are only a few centimeters in size, and even on postcards the owls are bigger than in the originals.
The artist says she enjoys "poking" with a zero-size brush, which is very-very thin. She shows a drawing, where practically every line is not thicker than a hair.
At times, the brush has produced not only owls: gnomes, couples, elves and a joyful company of cute little animals, like foxes for example.
- Being a biologist, I love all animals. In my works you'll see a frequent character - my dog, a French bulldog.
Back then, the owls made a series, though unplanned. The big-eyed birds, unlike each other, were made in different styles and genres: in suits, crinolines, hats and boots, lab coats, feathers, with books, lollipops, garlands, a cup of cocoa, on skates, on a skateboard, with a hockey stick. The artist posted the works exclusively on her personal page on the VKontakte social network. By the way, her drawings are available there now, and numerous groups with her owl images have nothing to do with the artist.
- Apparently, the audience wanted something like this, there was a demand for some kind of a light, simple childish emotion. And I was amazed the owls "took off". There began some kind of owl madness.
Owls grasp the world, and owls grasped by companies
About six months later, the owls appeared on postcards, and Postcrossing spread them across the globe. Further on, the images appeared on other products, in addition to postcards.
- Well, sure, all that global exchange was a little surprising to me, - Inga says. - I receive a letter or some kind of feedback from a boy in Japan or from India, from the Netherlands. I actually had a true fan group in the Netherlands, which is very surprising. I couldn't understand where it all came from and how it all works. That was an interesting experience.
The experience was as much pleasant as sad.
- A lot of pain, I am not exaggerating. It was a very difficult period, which dragged on for quite long, with all those courts, with all the authorities.
There were no limits to using the owl images, including by big corporations. Inga had to fight for her copyright. Precedents of the kind were very few in Russia in the early 2010s. Often, what happened with paintings was: the drawing was copied, some details changed, and it seemed to be another work. Many court hearings were in Ivanovo, as the textile industries loved the owls. One big company has used at a time eleven images of owls.
- They forge documents claiming inside that big company was a small company that produced this image, and then that small company closed, and that's it, no one is responsible, - she says. - That required truly strong nerves. I have suffered depressive moments, and they all can be seen clearly in my works.
Inga shows a drawing of a fairy princess with a cat in her arms. But when you look closely, it's not at all a cat, it's a clot of darkness staring at you with round eyes.
Inga has lost some of the courts, and some she did win. There have been quite many honest businesses, but the lawsuits and the nerves they took have affected her greatly: she quit the scientific work, abandoned her dissertation and became a freelancer.
Space Jam
Not so long ago, Inna had a personal exhibition in Severodvinsk. The exposition did not have a single owl image. That was her decision. She exhibited works created in recent few years. The exhibition was called Space Jam. The name appeared a long time ago. That was the name of a cafe on one of the paintings. The idea to make an exhibition emerged well before the pandemic, but she has managed to implement it this year only. Both Severodvinsk and Arkhangelsk do not have many locations to host a small exhibition. Inga's works are small, two or four images can fit an A4 sheet, so the hall must not be huge - not to press the drawings. In Severodvinsk, the exhibition was held at a model library (a space with modern equipment where you can borrow books, work or attend master classes). The exposition did not have a single owl, and yet, a couple owls still managed to get into the Space Jam art book. Every time, it's not easy to decide an exhibition, Inga says, adding "after all, my audience is rather on the Internet."
No owls, though butterflies, elves, toads, tigers, funny girls and two Marchs.
- Marchs? Who are they?
Inga smiles pointing to the work showing an arrogant young man, half-turned and looking down at the viewer. A cold wave clearly comes from the painting.
- I have a little tradition: every year, I paint March. In fact, I really love this month, because the day is growing, and it's getting lighter. Though March is still quite dark in our latitudes, and, frankly, it's still a winter month, but to me it is a time of maximum uplift and inspiration. And every year I have a new image. A few years ago those were just "marble" fragile young people, and this year I have a funny girl with a cute piggy.
Inga says her favorite technique is watercolor - it does not tolerate mistakes and nothing can be fixed, unlike gouache or acrylic, where you can add another layer, and the problem is fixed.
- Watercolor is light and airy, it is for one time, - Inga shows another artwork: an elegant girl painted with very fine lines, and explains that she usually makes a drawing at one time, and quite often it may be with a TV series on the background. - Later on, when I look at the work after a while, I can remember what movie was on, or what paleontology program was on, or what I was doing that day.
Arts and biology
Inga has always enjoyed drawing. After the ninth grade, she went to St. Petersburg, but failed exams to the Nicholas Roerich Art College. However, she says, that did not upset her too much. After graduating from secondary school, at first she wanted to take a course in social services, but at the last moment she thought better of it and passed exams to the Biology Department, which she has never regretted.
In her fifth year at the university, the girl joined a team to create a genetic laboratory at the Institute of Environmental Problems of the North and started writing a PhD paper on pond snails.
- Basically, I used to sit in the lab to extract DNA by PCR tests long before they became a mainstream, and in the pandemic everyone learned what they are. - Inga laughs saying back then her characters were with flasks and in lab coats, and in the laboratory for a long time on the wall remained, as it was nicked, a "PCR koala" - a koala holding a test tube in its paws - as a symbol of young biologists and their work.
Inga is the author of all her characters. When illustrating books, she creates images from scratch, using only verbal descriptions. Her drawings have been published in three books. One of them is, of course, about owls, where stories are based on popular images. Inga says, at times she writes little essays or fairy tales for her drawings to express the characters.
- The emotion must get ripe to express what I have not expressed completely in my drawing. If you take this work, there's a story about a girl, she was looking for something in the middle of the night, carrying it warmly although she was very scared.
Fluke as a good luck
For the Museum of the White Sea, Inga came up with a logo and drew a little fluke. The image observes all the biological characteristics of this flat fish. The sea near Severodvinsk is rich in fluke, and on the Yagry Island runs the Kambalka ('little fluke') River.
- Fluke is an interesting image. In addition, it's a pun: in English, the word fluke means both 'a fluke fish' and 'an unexpected good luck', which can be fun in souvenirs. However, we don't get hung up on one image - fluke is not the only image we have. We also use a bittern which is not easy to see, but which is hooting amid reeds on the White Sea shores. As well as woodpeckers, and white-tailed eagles that build giant nests, and all sorts of mollusks, and majestic jellyfish, and ancient Vendian creatures that lived here 600 million years ago.
Inga often devotes her drawings to working moments: for example, several colorful jellyfish hovering behind large windows.
As for the Museum of the White Sea on the Yagry - the plan is to open it in the coming year, just after a renovation.