Creating A Paper Trail

Every piece of paper is more than a blank canvas to artist Yulia Brodskaya—they also serve as a brush, a pen, a pencil. “I draw and paint with paper instead of on it,” she says. That’s a simple summation of her work in which she manipulates paper of different cuts, colors, sizes and textures to create one-of-a-kind, threedimensional pieces infused with life and emotion.

But the pieces this Russian-born U.K. resident creates are hardly simple; they’re intricate and detailed, executed with her own constantly evolving techniques that require precision, not to mention days’ (or sometimes weeks’) worth of hard work and attention. Brodskaya’s at the forefront of the art of quilling (also known as paper filigree), a skill that dates back to Renaissance France and Italy and 18th-century England—and it’s enjoyed a recent burst of popularity. But Brodskaya has made her own version of quilling something new and thrilling: Many of her paper creations are now owned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Country Music Association and Oprah Winfrey.

The 39-year-old was trained as a graphic designer, but she has been a highly regarded paper artist for more than a decade. “For these ‘drawn’ pieces, I follow a pencil line that I previously sketched on a background with bent or shaped segments of card or heavy paper, which I glue on top, thus creating a 3D interpretation of a line,” she explains. About eight years ago she mastered her “painting” technique; she says it “imitates brushstrokes with tightly packed strips of paper, achieved by combining different color strips in a method similar to mixing paints on a palette.” This approach has become Brodskaya’s forte: She’s penned a book about the practice entitled Painting With Paper: Painting on the Edge, and even launched her own mobile game, “Paper Mingle.”

On the following pages are samples of Brodskaya’s extensive collection, from floral designs (which she says are therapeutic to create) to personal portraits that depict emotion—as a traditional painting would—but with the added quality of a third dimension. Is this what they mean by looking good on paper?

In “Phoenix,” a young woman is juxtaposed with the immortal bird from Greek mythology. “Watch me rise like a phoenix from the ashes to become a heroine in my own legend,” Brodskaya writes.