Pepelangelo

My name is Olga Vishnevskaya, I am 29 years old, I was born in the city of Kovrov, it is a small city with many military industries three hours from Moscow, but now I live in Tbilisi, Georgia. I have been drawing and painting since 2017, when Pepelangelo was born as a project and a phenomenon.

It's a very long story. In 2017, I had no job and lived in a terrible apartment on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, now I understand that I was in a deep depression. I decided to take drawing lessons from a teacher friend of mine so that I would have at least some reason to leave the house. At first, my drawings were terrible and I failed everything I did, I often cried during the lessons. Then we decided to start working with color - I made watercolor still lifes from life. It became more fun. For my birthday, my grandmother sent me a present - two of her old canvases. One was with Jesus and the other had a vase of irises. My grandmother is not an artist and she did not feel sorry for her work. She suggested to overpaint it with something. I know that since ancient times artists learn by copying the Old Masters, copying classical art. I decided to copy the portrait of Philip II by Anthonis Mor. But drawing a human head is very difficult - it consists of many shapes, in addition, every day we see human's faces and even the slightest mistake in the drawing becomes visible - the portrait becomes ugly or frightening. Therefore, I decided to draw not a human head, but a frog's head. After all, Pepe was originally a 2d character and his head design is quite primitive. It seemed to me to embody this head in volume and make it more realistic is a good task for such an aspiring artist like me. So I copied the costume but added Pepe's head. I did not plan to make money from this, for me it was an exercise in developing the skills of a draftsman and painter. The portrait came out very funny and I decided to make a few - to give to my friends for the New Year, because I had almost no work and money.

In my youth, I was a regular visitor to anonymous imageboards, and there I saw some Pepe memes. In the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet, he has always been a symbol of loneliness, melancholy and bright sadness, he has never had a political context. Of course, I had a folder on my desktop with my favorite Pepes. Later, Pepe became for me a set of geometric shapes - here is light, and here is shadow. Here is yellow and here is green. And now his head is turned and the light falls in a different place ... Pepe has become my artist's training equipment. At some point, I was terribly tired of green paint, people only wanted Pepe paintings from me. It seemed to me that I was trapped, that I was a prisoner of Pepe. Now Pepe for me is a whole layer of culture and a huge community. In such a short time, Pepe's existence has become such a complex cultural phenomenon that it can no longer be explained in a small text. I'm glad to be a small part of this story.

Fortunately or unfortunately, oil painting is quite an expensive thing. But you can leave it as a legacy to your grandchildren))) To create a painting you need a lot of space. You need light, a stretcher, canvas, brushes and paints, an easel. Also, painting takes time - the work is carried out in many stages. After each layer I wait for it to dry to continue working, sometimes it can take 7-10 days for the layer to dry, sometimes it happens faster. Of course, in 6 years I have become a faster artist 🙂 But almost any painting still requires weeks. As a rule, I always have several paintings in the work at the same time. Sometimes I work on 20 paintings at once. And I'm trying not to go crazy. In order not to work on 50 paintings at the same time and not end up in a mental hospital, I raised the prices. I know that many people would still like to have my Pepe at home, so I sell canvas prints. But it's not just prints! For each print, I add a few different strokes of oil paint to make the print more alive and unique. In addition, often these strokes are voluminous and from a distance this print is very similar to real oil painting.

I dream of an exhibition, but for this I should stop taking too much orders and to find someone who is a very good organizer of events. I would like to learn what frogs and toads mean in different cultures. I would like to analyze the myths and fairy tales of different peoples of the world where frogs are involved and create different art about it. Not only painting - but also stained glass, dolls, panels, illustrations, sculptures. I also love working from life. I would like to paint more nude models from life.

It was a big surprise for me when I found out that Pepe has a political context. It is very difficult for some people to imagine this, but not everything revolves around the political agenda in the United States. I tried to never do overtly political paintings with Pepe. The exception was the case of the Hong Kong Parliament. But then I was really struck by the history of the protests in Hong Kong. It was something alive and real. Many now associate Pepe with the NFT. I am very interested in what will happen to Pepe in 10 years.

Sometimes I do ceremonial portraits of pets. Sometimes I have some energy and free time to do something for my own pleasure - then these are portraits of people from life.

Pepelangelo is my full time job. Painting itself is not 100 percent of my time - there is also communication with customers, maintaining social networks, purchasing materials, searching for references, taking photos and videos. I also opened a bar in St. Petersburg, but now I don’t manage it, my friend does it for me. It does not bring money, only expenses))