Illustration for The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights 1996

This illustration by Vyacheslav Nazaruk for The Tale of the Dead Princess, is a window into a hushed world of folk narrative and quiet labor. It’s all in the lines, fine and deliberate, a delicate dance between storytelling and design. I can almost feel the scratch of the pen, the artist building up the scene layer by layer. How the colors must have been poured in, each choice carefully considered to bring depth and warmth to this interior. I get a sense that Nazaruk wanted to show the princess as both part of her world, and apart from it, a peaceful moment suspended in time. You see how she is bent over her work, the light falling just so, with a real sense of peace and focus, almost like a Vermeer, but then Nazaruk's borders take you off to somewhere else entirely, a place of pure play and imagination. And that's what it is to be a painter, always moving between worlds!