Fräulein Talents: Sofiia Stepanova

I paint as a continuous gesture of building and undoing myself.

I think the most honest calling happened when I was a child. It was innocent and soft. I created worlds I could disappear into for hours. When I experience doubt now, I remember that small girl and think she couldn’t have been wrong.

I would say surrender to the situation, but for me surrender is not passive. Sometimes surrender includes fighting, it means accepting reality fully and then responding to it with clarity rather than resistance.

I don’t fully trust esthetics that feel too resolved. Sometimes I even wonder how that can be enough. As a painter, I express myself through color and form, and I found my language gradually, through experimentation and constantly questioning my own decisions. It shifts as I shift, and right now I’m especially interested in light, and in how much weight a shadow can carry. I work with memories and gestures, and with the phenomenology of identity, the lived instability of the self within structures that appear fixed. I can’t find one fixed term for it, but I know that movement is essential for me.

Honestly, my work has been my biggest confrontation. It has grown directly out of my personal development and life circumstances. Emotional depth and empathy are necessary, but without distance they become chaos. I’ve had to learn how to step back and translate feeling into form, rather than just living inside it.

It would be a labyrinth, not as a trap, but as a structure where every path inevitably leads you back to something fundamental. I’ve always been fascinated by the mythology surrounding it and by its inner architecture, and I’m working toward making that spatial logic more concrete in my practice.

I see magic in many things. For me, magic is not mystical, it’s a moment of heightened attention. In painting, it happens after long hours of uncertainty, when you move through resistance and something shifts. It feels like working with the material rather than against it, a moment of unity where doubt disappears and you’re fully present. Sometimes it even feels as if the work has its own spirit, and you’re connecting to it rather than controlling it. It’s rare, but when it happens, you understand why you keep going.

Trying to inherit someone else’s idea of success feels like failure to me. When I stay within my own process, failure becomes part of movement rather than the opposite of success. It becomes a necessary stage, not a verdict. Letting go of an idea or allowing a work time to breathe is often the hardest part, especially in a culture that pushes constant production. Success, for me, feels quiet, it’s when something aligns internally, even if it is unresolved on the surface.

Struggle and insecurity are inseparable from being creative. The real shift happens when you stop trying to eliminate vulnerability and instead learn to work with it. For a long time we’re taught that feeling “enough” comes from external validation, and unlearning that is part of the artistic process. I’ve done a lot of internal work, but even when you think you’ve found peace with something, the act of creating can expose what you’ve been avoiding. If you’re not ready to face those parts of yourself, the process suffers. Creativity requires a certain kind of bravery.

I’ve thought about multiple video projects over the years. I made several attempts, but they always moved to the background because painting remained my main focus. I don’t see them as failed ideas, more as ideas waiting for the right time. They are still present in my mind.

The landscape of Kyiv is deeply imprinted in me, it has shaped the pace at which I move in life and in art. The city is very hilly, and walking there means constantly ascending and descending, I remember cutting the long road and climbing up almost adventurously, losing my breath, then feeling the ease of going down again, or standing still and looking into the wide space of the Dnipro River. That rhythm of tension and release still lives in how I construct emotional space in my work. Kyiv taught me that no matter how much something tries to break its spirit, it keeps its beauty and elegance, and that resilience remains a quiet foundation in me. Culturally, I am influenced by various Ukrainian female writers and by the legacy of the Executed Renaissance, by this history of artists who continued to hold and protect culture despite destruction. That awareness of fragility and endurance shapes the way I think about art, and about responsibility.

Curiosity is the most important starting point. If you want to master something, you have to accept that it won’t be easy, and honestly, that’s the point. Difficulty is not a sign to stop, it’s usually a sign that something is shifting. Staying playful is essential, because vision grows through exploration, not control. You also have to find your own pace, even if it’s slower or stranger than everyone else’s. And maybe most importantly, be selective about whose judgment you absorb, take advice from people who are generous and actually building something, not from those who only comment from the sidelines.

It would be difficult for me to name just one woman, because I’ve been surrounded by female friends, colleagues, and artists who shared parts of their journeys with me, especially the strength of speaking about things that for a long time remained unspoken. I’ve learned from each of them, from favorite female authors, artists, and mentors. And at some point I realized that I also had to become that kind of woman for myself.

For me, children occupy an ontological position within an already existing system , they enter narratives that were formed before them. These figures often represent the moment when repetition begins, when gestures and roles are inherited rather than consciously chosen. I’m interested in observing how positions like witness, victim, or even villain are not fixed identities, but roles that circulate within a structure.

Each series develops its own palette. I often experience memories as very colorful, even when the content is dark. I’m interested in translating psychological weight into color, brightness doesn’t necessarily mean comfort in my work.

I work in different ways. I need routine, so I write, read, collect images, words, and sounds, and sketch before I begin. Preparation is important to me, but at some point it has to dissolve, and I start on a large canvas without a finished idea, to see where it can bring me. I have to give myself the freedom to change and open new doors. I move back and forth, I stop, step away, sketch, read, think, then return to the surface. Sometimes there is resistance, even a small fight with the painting, and I value that tension because it opens a wider spectrum of possibilities. Although I don’t always enjoy it. Sometimes the resistance feels frustrating, like in a dream where you try to fight but your arms move slowly and awkwardly, as if they were made of cotton. That helpless slowness is also part of the process.I’ve learned that the moments I want to escape are often the ones that change the painting.

What inherited gesture are you trying to stop?

I would tell her to trust herself more and look inward, because there are answers there that no one else can give, and the body doesn’t lie, even when the mind tries to negotiate. It won’t be easy, but easy was never the point. I would rather take the long way, because every step matters, not just the destination. Life keeps changing, so don’t hold too tightly to what was. And to my future self, I would promise not to become comfortable in a way that makes me smaller.