Botanical sculptor · Cold porcelain
Svetlana Zamushinskaya
Usually an artist's story speaks of education, diplomas and achievements. I hold two engineering degrees with honours, and for many years I worked as a lead design engineer. But flowers came into my life for an entirely different reason.
They became a place where I could be alone with myself and forget, for a while, the rush of everyday life. Gradually this fascination grew into something far greater. Flowers taught me to look at the world more attentively, to notice beauty in the details, to see the harmony of lines and forms.
Today flowers are not a profession or a list of achievements to me. They are a part of my soul — a way of existing in this world, of understanding and feeling it.
“I do not try to repeat nature.I try to preserve the sense of wonder it awakens.”
I work with cold porcelain because it is pliable and lets me create the thinnest petals, flowing lines and complex curves, and join many details into a single form.
What matters to me is not only the flowers themselves, but the space in which they live. The silence, the light, the air around them. Space becomes a continuation of the work and helps you see it truly.
Each flower is born slowly — through observation, reflection and the careful study of a beauty that surrounds us every day and so often goes unnoticed.
The beauty of a living flower captivates me, yet in my work I allow myself to step beyond natural accuracy. I may change the palette, deepen the curve of a petal, make a form more harmonious — not to correct nature, but because I am searching for its ideal image.
It is not a copy of a flower. It is an attempt to keep its beauty the way the heart remembers it.
Once I brought a bouquet to a client so we could look at the composition together and discuss the final details. I looked at it through the artist's eyes, thinking of what could still be changed or improved. She stood beside me and looked quite differently — with wonder.
“This is incredibly beautiful. This is real art. Please keep doing this. Please don't stop.”
I often recall those words. Sometimes you become so absorbed in the making that you stop noticing the feeling people have when they meet beauty. Perhaps it is for that very moment — when a person pauses, looks closer, and begins to see the beauty around them — that I create my flowers.