http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/michaelasanda-1604267-natalia-dolgova2/

Natalia Dolgova was born in Siberia in 1968 and trained as an artist in Magadan and then at the V.I. Mukhina Academy of Art in St. Petersburg. She has lived and worked in Denmark and now lives and works in the picturesque village of Netherthong in the Pennines of Yorkshire. She paints in both oils and watercolours to bring to life stories, legends and personalities from the places she lives. She uses a variety of techniques including Batik and the combination of different pigments to add depth and light to her compositions.

I love nature and Inuit culture, so I paint people and the myths.

A face turned to the sky

As the writer Jury Rytkheu wrote in the Russian publication Creative Spirit, Dolgova’s work represents “a mythological environment offering inspiration to the will, letting off into free flight the magic bird of creative imagination.” (‘The Phenomenon of Natalya Dolgova’)

Before hunting

Get up! A festival is coming to our village

The embroiderer

The light of an old oil lamp is twinkling inside a winter tent in the snowstorm-stricken tundra. To make its flame brighter a girl is putting some dry moss into it. Threads of reindeer veins, osseous thimble, a needle… A needlewoman puts skins for cutting under her knees, and tenderly flattens thews with her sweet hand. She measures with her fingers and cuts with a sharp knife.A girl sewed a kuchlanka (a kind of fur coat) and went out into the village street. And there the best of lads saw her and fell in love with her; he lost his rest and soon married her.Old craftswomen pass on their skills to young girls and edify them; “Learn to sew perfectly, for the one you are in love with could be proud, not only of your beauty but also of your art.”Embroidery is a traditional Eskimo art. Women embroider beads and make patterns from the leather shreds. There are motives of national poetry in every single ornament. Eskimo folklore is based on talks with spirits.A habitual life event can also be used as a plot for folklore song, giving an idea for a new pattern ornament: Evrazhka the lemming is running in tundra; it is running fast. Kirginaut cannot catch up with Evrazhka. Though there is no faster herdswoman than Kirginaut in the whole village, she cannot reach it.

An

acci

dent

al w

itnes

s

Dan

-Dan

(th

e w

ay

of f

ishi

ng.

A jo

ke

Kop

alkh

en (

luck

y hu

ntin

g)Fishing

Gra

ndm

othe

r su

n

Old people of the North… Wise and naive, silent, meek and active. In general, changeable like children.Here is my Grandmother-Sun. When young she worked as a reindeer breeder on a state farm. She passed for a smart and skilful girl. She lived her life as if she was stringing glass beads on thin leather string. Life flew by like a swift-winged swan. Lo and behold! - she is an old woman already. She has never aimed at material values - and in fact she has never needed them. All the treasures she has ever had are still with her. She has had freedom and she could touch the skies with her hand; she has had the earth, she is gliding by so lightly as if she is carrying the wind. This earth is fruitless and deserted, so she did not need to struggle for it, she did not need to plough it and build houses and pave streets on it. It is all tundra, coast, and the sea - nothing but an endless way. And it is my Grandmother-Sun with her childish light that illuminates this way.

A lo

ve s

tory

Alo

ne

in t

he s

ea

Tundra (first of a series of 4 portraits)

Blue ox

Brown deer

Come back to home

Convesation

Footprints in the snow

I stand on white snow. Beside me there is the sea, whispering with its heavy waves.This whisper is trying to tell me that there is no way back.And in front of me a familiar footprint in the new snow has just appeared.“Have they come for me? Or am I mistaken? Or is this footprint mistaken?”The old men say that one should not turn round towards the vibrant sound like the song of a woman who had stayed on the shore hoping and longing for her husband, a hunter. “I cannot counteract the strength of my own intuition. I turn my head. I find the answer. I see the footprints in the bright red snow.”

A letter from home

Girls and Walruses

Grandmother's adviceToys of the giant Lolgylin

Girls and Walruses

Two women at the seashore

Kukinyaku (first triptych picture)

Lucky hunter

Mis

tres

s of

the

Sea

The

Mot

her

of t

he S

ea

My husband-whale

A n

ew d

ay is

com

ing

Winter 1

One summers eve in the tundra

The scoop

The woman and the whale

The woman and the whale

Three sisters

The Snow Queen Icons of Faith & Fate

Sound: Inuit - From Traditional Greenlandic Music

On Eagles wings ~ Tribal winds flutes ~ Carlos Nakai

Text and pictures: InternetCopyright: All the images belong to their authors

Presentation: Sanda Foi oreanuşwww.slideshare.net/michaelasanda

Inuit religion was closely tied to a system of rituals integrated into the daily life of the people. These rituals were simple but held to be necessary. According to a customary Inuit saying,The great peril of our existence lies in the fact that our diet consists entirely of souls.By believing that all things, including animals, have souls like those of humans, any hunt that failed to show appropriate respect and customary supplication would only give the liberated spirits cause to avenge themselves.