Drawings and prints
I never intended this to happen. I suppose, like life itself, your professional journey takes unexpected turns while you believe you're charting its course. In 2002, following a swift career in political journalism, I enthusiastically delved into travel writing. Having grown up in a country that demanded both exit and entrance visas at its borders, I now passionately traversed Europe, Turkey, the Middle East, Asia, the United States, Africa, and South America...
I was greedy, I wanted to embrace it all. I immersed myself in each location threefold. I read ahead of trips, then experienced in person - wandered, asked, tasted, observed, breathed in. Then I wrote, exploring further and reliving my journey.
Becoming a travel writer was a dream come true. Little did I know that, a decade later, I would revisit the same places as a food writer. Little did I know that 20 years later I would return as a travel sketcher! And so another triptych would form in my explorations...
So this is who I am now—a travel sketcher. I travel for various reasons, but nothing compares to the joy of capturing new places and life scenes in my sketchbook. Storing them there to savor greedily at any time. It continues to amaze me how it works, how the world and I merge, flow, and blend into a colored drawing. Here we become one, a seemingly foolish yet profoundly satisfying process. Isn't life endlessly stunning?
Here you can find some of my work from the last years: series of drawings from my travels and prints which I made using mono-print and lynoblock-print techniques. In the shop on the link below you could purchase prints of some of the watercolors and original prints. You are welcome to contact me, should you have any questions, related to my art. Your feedback is also very welcome, I am looking forward to hearing from you!
Drawings
The Czech Series
In the autumn of 2022, I spent two months on a Josef Dobrovskŷ fellowship at the Czech Academy of Sciences. My task was to research the social history of Havirov, a Stalinist new town built in the 1950s in the mining, heavily industrialized region of Moravia-Silesia. I divided my time between Prague, with is richness of epicurean experiences, gorgeous views, and magnificent libraries, and Silesia, where trains crossed in the air above an iron-clad landscape of monumental industrial heritage.
With its patchwork of modern and old, rural and urban, western and eastern European elements, the region is intersected by a thick net of public transport, on which I found myself traveling incessantly from one archive to another. I was alone, on the way, and in intensive working mode—the most motivating circumstances to fill any idle second with drawing. I drew cafe scenes, passengers waiting for trains, riding trains, sleeping on the trains, and at some point, I remember sketching a train station in the five minutes my train spent on it. Drawing was both satisfying and a bit frustrating - there was so much to capture and so little that I could actually do. This series includes a few of the nearly hundred sketches I made there. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I did while making them!
The London Series
These sketches were made during my trips to the UK - private and for research, between 2021 and 2024.
The France Series
When I was living in my native town of Sofia in the 1990s and early 2000s, I thought it was an extraordinary privilege to be in such proximity to Greece and Turkey. Istanbul, and especially Thessaloniki in the winter, Halkidiki, Alexandrupolis, Izmir - these were all locations for happy escapes during long weekends or various holidays. In Belgium, such extraordinary privilege is the proximity of France, which to me remains the most lusciously beautiful European country.
Monoprints
These works are produced with a silicon plate. In some cases I can develop an idea into several prints, which are though never completely identical.
Lino prints
This technology allows for a number of hand-made copies. I do not use a printing press but do the printing by hand. In some cases I finish the black&white prints with inks by hand.
