Around the World with Sketch-Book

Olga Vladimirovna Karpachyova is a painter and an artist-restorer.

She graduated from the Suzdal Art and Restoration School in 1996 and Cherepovets State University in 2004.

In 1995, she participated in the conservation of the murals of the 18^th-19^th centuries in the Assumption Cathedral of the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery.

Olga Karpachyova has been working as an artist-restorer of oil and tempera painting in the Vologda State Museum-Preserve for History, Architecture and Art since 1999.

She is a member of the Union of Russian Writers since 2001, a scholar of the Ministry of Culture of the RF (2002) and the Club of Business Communication (Vologda, 2004), a diploma winner of the contest “Reflection” (Moscow, 2009).

Olga Karpachyova has been taking part in international, All-Russian and regional exhibitions since 1999. She has already participated in over 70 displays, 10 of them were one-man exhibitions.

Her pictures are kept in the collections of the Vologda State Museum-Preserve for History, Architecture and Art, the Vologda Regional Picture Gallery, the Kirillo-Belozersky Historical, Architectural and Art Museum-Reserve, the Inta Museum (the Komi Republic), in the museums of the Vologda region (Vytegra, Totma, Ustyuzhna, the private gallery of Y.I. Lunin, Cherepovets), in France (Paris), the USA (the Starov Art Gallery, Dallas), China (Beijing), Italy (Milan), Bulgaria (Burgas, Pomorie), Poland (Warsaw, Siemiatycze).

The artist works in the technique of tempera painting creating landscapes, still lifes, genre pictures. Her leading genre is the architectural open-air landscape. She develops the traditions of the Russian school of plein air painting of the early 20^th century.

The exhibition presented 62 works painted by Olga Karpachyova from 2005 to 2014. She always travels taking a sketch-box with her. A desire for new impressions brings the artist to different cities and countries.

The range of her trips is rather wide: Norway, Tunisia, Poland, Bulgaria, Spain, India, Slovakia, Greece, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Egypt, Turkey, Crete, and Cyprus. It certainly does her good. The emotional line of her works is refreshed in these travels and her painting becomes technicolor, texture and rich in the colour palette.

But in spite of plenty foreign trips, Olga Karpachyova is pleased to come back to her native country and to depict city landscapes of ancient Vologda, Totma, Kirillov, other small towns and villages of the Vologda region. She managed to create the most touching in feeling and pictorial qualities works only in Russia. These places are familiar to many people, but spectators will look at this world where there is no fuss, but where kindness and spiritual harmony reign in a new way.

Nature is very important for her. She feels her very well and almost doesn’t add anything. Large cycles of sketches created in different climatic, natural and time zones are vividly interpreted representation of the reality full of personal feelings of the artist.

The displayed pictures of Olga Karpachyova showed her growing skills and great creative potential.

L.M. Kharlapenkova, head of the Sector of Permanent and Temporary Exhibitions