Are you tired of minimalist and abstract art and want to look at something different? Do you want to see work by talented young artists? Then welcome to the Victoria Olt Gallery. This cozy and vibrant place is located right on Viru tänav the entrance to Old Town. The gallery founder is a well-known Estonian artist, Victoria Olt. You can find her paintings among the works of other young figurative artists in the permanent exhibition in the gallery’s back room. Two temporary exhibition rooms change every two months.
As for me, I like to visit the Victoria Olt Gallery more often than that – to take a break from the city noise and look at the masterfully made works, full of bright colors, and recharge with this flow of inspiration. In addition, from time to time I buy Olt’s handmade Alchemist paints, which fascinate me with the subtlety and depth of their metallic shine.
I decided to talk to Victoria to find out more about her artistic vision of the world and what makes her gallery special.
Jerry Mercury: Could you please introduce yourself?
Victoria Olt: I am an Estonian painter, predominantly I use watercolor, and make figurative artworks. When I was 13, I moved to Spain with my mom where I spent seven years and I went to high school and university there. I first started selling my artwork when I was 17 and it’s what I’ve been doing since then. I have also lived and worked in Amsterdam and I spent the years of covid in the Caribbean (Nevis), after which I returned to Estonia to start my own art gallery.
Victoria, what is the source of your inspiration?
I get a lot of my ideas in the state that I would call semi-sleep. It’s that time of day when you’re just starting to wake up but the rational part of your brain has not woken up yet so you’re left with the creative part of your brain that is free from all the constraints of logic, and it has great ability to make connections where no connections usually occur. I get asked all the time if I take psychedelics to come up with the ideas for my paintings but the truth is that’s just how my brain works sober.
Please share how you became an artist?
I first started painting so I could paint complex designs on my nails. When I moved to Spain with my mother at 13, I spoke no Spanish and therefore I couldn’t communicate with anyone in school, the only time anyone said anything to me was when they said “Oh wow I love your nails”, so I started making more and more complex nail art designs. This went on for years, I had a nail art blog and I participated and won many nail art competitions, until one day I burnt one of my fingers, so my hands became less nice to take pictures of, so I had to resort to painting on paper, and that’s how it all began. I still use a lot of the techniques I learned from painting nails, I use a lot of transparencies and I like special effect paints which are so easy to access in nail polish and so hard to access in normal paint. It’s actually one of the reasons I started to make my own paint, so I would be able to use paints that shimmered or changed colors.
Please, talk more about how and when you started making watercolors?
I had always been vehemently against making my own paint as it’s really time consuming and paint can just be bought, and even though I wasn’t finding all the paints I wanted to use, I was making do with the ones I could get. But then one day I woke up with a strong desire to make paint, so I decided to give it a chance.
How would you characterize your artistic style?
I would say my art style could be most accurately described as magical realism. However, that term has been claimed by a completely different branch of art so I usually call my own style pop surrealism. If someone who has no idea what I do nor knows any art-specific terms asks me, I usually say that I paint portraits with lots of color.
In the descriptions of some of your paintings one can find references to folk myths. Which people’s myths are you most interested in?
Mostly I am interested in the stories of women. It can be not so easy to see a woman’s perspective in the stories of some cultures, though. Greco-Roman culture was quite misogynist to begin with, and on top of that, a lot of translations we have of mythology came from medieval monks who of course inserted their perspective into the texts. So, when I read a mythological story, I try to think how an ancient Greek mother would tell this story to her daughter. And for my book “Lost Gods” that’s the version of the story we put in the book. Now that doesn’t make the stories any less cruel to women but some of the cruelty towards women depicted in the stories was cautionary and important to warn your daughters about.
Mythological stories are reflective of the period of human history that they come from, it is interesting to see what kind of stories were deemed important enough to tell others and what that says about how the world was back then. I find it quite compelling how gods are displayed in Greek myths as deeply flawed and irrational, in juxtaposition to god in the Christian world. And I think this imperfect way of seeing gods makes a lot of sense because it explains things about nature and about humans. Like how Hades, the god of death, kidnaps Persephone from her mother Demeter, the goddess of agriculture. It teaches you something about life, that death can steal a daughter from her mother, and it explains grief as Demeter falls into such depression that nothing grows for months. This is both a reflection of how cruel life can be sometimes and explains why nothing grows in the winter.
How did you get the idea to create a gallery? How did it all start?
There aren’t many galleries out there now that display primarily figurative art by younger artists, and I was really missing that. When I go to many European galleries the primary art style seems to be abstraction or minimalism, especially this kind of zero art which I am not into. I did not understand why this minimal skill, minimal effort style was predominant when I knew so many highly skilled artists out there. I’m sure you have heard the saying “Be the change want to you see in the world” and so I decided to follow it and display the art that I felt was underrepresented.
What makes your gallery unique?
I would say the Estonian art scene is in pretty good shape compared to other European capitals, at least from my point of view. There are a lot of galleries here that display art by the old masters, and so I wanted to display art made by younger people. I have seen myself how important it is to support young talent. It’s not easy to work as an artist, so it is crucial to have some sort of support for artists at the beginning of their careers. I have seen many exceptionally talented people give up and stop painting, and it’s a tragedy every time, so it is one of my primary goals to lessen that.
What artists do you collaborate with? By what principle do you select candidates for your exhibitions?
As an art consumer, what I look for in art is something I would not be able to create in my own imagination, whether it be the subject matter, how the subject is presented, use of color or technique. Besides I am a classically trained artist, and I have spent years learning techniques and I have seen an absolutely ridiculous amount of art in my life, so it’s not hard for me to see which artwork was high in effort and which was not, nor is it hard to detect unique ideas. These two things along with consistency are what I look for.
Do you invite the artists, or do they find you on their own?
We reach artists in both ways, usually we reach out to them but they can also apply on our website, but we only go through the applications when we need new artists which is not very often.
Paintings by artists presented in your gallery are also for sale. Who are their main buyers: residents of Estonia, or guests from other countries?
We have both Estonian and foreign buyers in fairly equal numbers. You would think that Estonians would buy bigger paintings and tourists smaller, but really, it’s spread quite evenly. With the ease of shipping these days we have had no issues shipping two-meter paintings to the U.S., so selling to tourists is not a challenge these days, and often foreign buyers are more accustomed to the style of art we display as well.
What are your plans for the future? Do you plan to create similar galleries in other parts of the city, country, or in other countries?
We actually do have plans of opening a new gallery quite soon, however, the space is still under construction and it still needs a lot of work so I can’t make any promises in regard to opening dates. I can say that it will be much bigger than the current space and will allow us to have many more different types of cultural events.
Eventually, I would like to open a second location in a different country, and behind the scenes I am working towards that, but I can’t say much more in that regard at this time.
What would you like to wish to the readers of this article?
I would just like to say that art is not scary, art is fun. I know if you’re just starting out in your journey as an art enthusiast it can be scary to visit galleries, but you shouldn’t be afraid. Looking at art is for everyone and it’s completely free to visit our gallery. And it’s free and no pressure to visit many other galleries too. So, I would encourage the reader to just have fun with it, it doesn’t have to be that serious. As a starting point, it’s okay if you just look at the art. You don’t need to know everything about the piece at hand, nor the artist. The artwork should be able to communicate something for itself.
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