Meet Kalina.
She is a visual artist whose mediums include photography, film, digital media, drawing, and mixed media. She expresses her observations on the external world, society, and the human experience. Stylistically, images range from hardly touched and natural to heavily manipulated.
Can you tell us about your creative process?
My creative process is very intuitive in nature and tends to be directly connected to feelings, memories and sensations. I like to have flexibility and fluidity, rather than analytical rigidity. Regardless of whether I'm working on a personal project or a more commercial project, my process tends to start with really feeling the idea, finding some music that fits the mood or the concept I am going for, and from there bits and pieces play in my head like a cut up film. If I don't have a particular visual, I start researching symbolism and meanings behind different words and concepts pertaining to the project or whatever it is I want to express visually. Sometimes I try to lay it out on paper and be more "analytical" about it but it's a fine line between thinking and overthinking, so usually I start with a vague idea and improvise a lot of the times once I start creating something. I usually hit two plateaus, one in the beginning when everything is coming together and I have a rough draft, but it doesn't quite look like anything yet, like a baby that hasn't formed itself into a recognizable human, and the other one is when I'm close to the finish line and start hesitating and questioning the final touches that are the make it or break it moment. As an artist, I have a great fear that I will fuck up my own work at some point in the process and will have to start over. At some point during my process, I also have to consciously stop myself from getting sucked into perfectionism so it's a delicate balance and an internal battle every time.
What themes do you explore through your art?
I have always been most interested in the human condition as that is a timeless topic. I am fascinated by anatomy, the mind/brain and that whole can of worms that I get sucked into a.k.a. neuroscience, how we think, the conditions people have, abnormalities, the strange and weird. I often explore themes that are in a way a study of myself therefore a study of all of humanity, in all its forms. During college, I got really obsessed with consumerism and environmentalism, fashion, advertising... most of everything I did was some kind of distorted person/body, like a mutated by-product of that whole industry. Lately I've been more metaphysical, especially with my drawings, and have been diving more into sacred geometry, and the connection between human and nature but I tend to not really stick too much to one specific theme.
Random Ritual Projects
Kalina designed the fashion garment Sekhmet and created the design for Persephone artwork and apparel. She has shot most of the product photos and videos that you see in our shop.