Tradestone Gallery

Artist Profile - Liliya Skubish

Liliya Skubish was born to Russian parents in Kishinev, Moldova. Her family returned to Russia when she was two years old. She grew up in a small village, surrounded by nature. As a child, she loved Biology class, where she learned about insects, animals, and plants and drew them with great detail in her notebook.

After finishing art school in her hometown of Mendeleevsk, she entered the Teacher Training Institute in Naberezhnie Chelny where she studied an academic approach to art. One year before graduating, Liliya moved to Brooklyn, NY, where she attended the New York City College of Technology, CUNY, studying graphic design and later, animation. She turned to illustration after being influenced by her teacher and thesis curator Anthony Accardo, a successful artist/illustrator. She completely surrendered to the study of illustration when she discovered its Golden Age, which took place around the turn of the 20th century and has deeply influenced her artistic style.

Since graduating, Liliya has worked on commissions for fairy-tale-themed paintings and kept up with her own projects. Liliya considers herself to be self-taught: where she stands now is the product of her regular visits to a life-drawing studio (Spring Studio in Soho, NY) and her examination of art from the early renaissance to the present. Her most recent project has been the illustrating of The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.

To more of her artwork on another website, click here.

Artist's Statement

I've been "drawing stories" since I was a child. Russia's rich history of folklore nourished my ever-wondering mind, and, together with my passion for art, informed my career as an illustrator.

Today, my artwork is inspired by mystical fiction full of esoteric ideas and extraordinary beauty. Mikhail Bulgakov's highly-regarded masterpiece The Master and Margarita was a challenge and a delight to illustrate. It is a fantastical novel about the devil and his servants set in 1930s Moscow. The second part of the book revolves around the character Margarita as a witch, and my series of illustrations is focused on her. According to the book, witches don't need clothes; I saw this as an opportunity for indulging my love of drawing the human form. I study anatomy and am a regular visitor of a life-drawing studio; thus, my illustrations are both figurative and representational.

My favorite medium is watercolor; I use quill pen and ink for delicate line work, which tames light and muted colors. Naturally, my style is ever-evolving, and in this series of illustrations I abandoned crisp line for dark tones to better illustrate night scenes and convey the devilish and mysterious mood of the book. I used black and introduced contrast, especially between Margarita's pale body and her dark surroundings. Determining the overall style of a series is important, but the most challenging part of my process is the composition of a scene. Even when appearances might change from one piece to another, the process of designing the layout remains the same. The goal is always to focus on one particular moment, suggesting a narrative that comes before and after this moment.

The Master and Margarita is a very rich, dynamic book, and my mind is like a prism through which this continuous story breaks into beautiful "still shots" to be captured with my own unique representation.

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from our collection in person. We have a special section for these items
inside our main store The Book Escape at 925 S. Charles Street in Baltimore.