In my 12th interview in this series, I interview ceramic artist Natalya Babych who is also my studio mate! In this lovely conversation we talk about nature-inspired art, the structures she uses to give herself creative time, and navigating Scottish accents as a non-native speaker. 

Shelley Skail: Where do you get ideas or inspiration for the pieces that you create?

Natalya Babych: My main inspiration, and the main ideas, are coming from nature. My family enjoy walking. We walk a lot during the weekends: we go to the forests, to the beaches, and all kinds of Botanical Gardens, for example. I really love it now it is Spring when everything is in bloom – I’m absolutely inspired. 

I’m like a small kid, you know, running from one flower to another. It actually brings me lots of ideas for what else I can make from porcelain. What flowers I can make, and that makes me push myself to try like to portray flowers in porcelain. 

Before I even asked that question I was looking around your studio, at all your nature inspired stuff and I was like I, I think I might have a clue to the answer to this question. [Both laugh]

Is there anything else that you have a sense of wonder about that comes into your art? 

I also like the combination of natural materials like wood and stone, and the porcelain. I like the contrast of the materials, you know, all this roughness of the stone or the roughness of the driftwood and the porcelain flowers – for me, it’s beautiful actually.

I like creating these ideas and going further with them.

I love it when you’re out and you see like a stone on a building or in nature and it has a little plant growing in a crack.

Yeah! This is the idea – how the life actually goes through and the bloom, the life, the growth, it actually just goes through anything. It keeps on growing it, it just keeps on living and you can’t stop it. From cracks in the concrete or whatever. So it still goes on. 

It’s also a cool idea for me to keep on living, keep on blooming because when we came from Ukraine, we were in a little bit of a ‘pause’ for a few years. It was like everything was paused, and we were frozen in our emotions, in our life. But then it all started to go and you feel that life goes on and you should move on, and you need to grow further and that’s actually everything about this work [with the contrasting materials]. 

That’s lovely. I think it’s a broadly applicable theme about perseverance?

Resilience, that’s maybe more about resilience.

Resilience, yes! I think, of course, in your particular situation it’s particularly profound. 

Yeah, it is.

We keep on growing and blooming together with my porcelain flowers

I love this, because I take a lot of inspiration from nature, and when I interviewed Lauren [Smith, a fellow studio resident], she also takes a lot of inspiration from nature. 

It’s really nice to know how different people get inspiration from the same nature of Scotland. I mean, we’re working with the same beaches, same forests, same places. And each of us takes her own idea of what to create or what to do; how to represent it, to live it through. That’s cool.

It’s lovely, all the different ways in which it manifests even in our little studio community.

Our community! So we’re all inspired by nature. And this creativity finds its way through different materials, different mediums. It’s lovely.

Who are your favourite artists? Do you have a top three or perhaps one that you love above all others? 

I do like Impressionism a lot and I like Monet and all the famous classical artists. But now I’m on Instagram in UK, and the worldwide artistic community, I have narrowed my attention to ceramic artists, whatever they are doing, but especially with porcelain.  I do really like to see what boundaries people, using the same material, are pushing and how their creativity works, that’s really cool. 

And in particular there is half Spanish, half English artist, Sophia Aguilera Lester. Last year she came to Edinburgh, she gave a masterclass. And once I saw that she was coming I was just like immediately, “I should be there, I should be there!”.

I was following her for years. She also makes flowers but her work is more monumental. She’s doing big pieces, huge vases full of porcelain flowers.

Her work is really colourful, unlike mine. I keep on using white porcelain and I don’t feel like adding any colours to it because I like the whiteness of it and, for me, this is the best thing.    

She’s a big inspiration for me, whatever she does.

I can see why, her stuff is lovely! 

Of the pieces that you’ve made, what’s your favourite? 

I make a little bit of functional stuff. Some tumblers, plates, something that can be used. I also have another part of my work and now I’m really more focused on this second part. It is a little bit of artistic work that I can exhibit – I’m preparing for an exhibition here in Leith Makers in November.

I want to fill in the space. So I really like to concentrate on making more of this artistic stuff just to have them on hand and then be able to put or apply for different Open Calls because I have something on hand. And one of my favourite pieces now is:

So lovely!

I have two different ones, and each of them is going to a different exhibition in May. 

And I’ve also got some ideas. They’re not fulfilled yet, I need to finish them, but the idea is of a garden growing out of picture frames. You still keep on growing, not the garden, but nature itself. So I want to have these old style, vintage, frames with the flowers blooming out, bursting out.

Sounds beautiful!

So I think you’ve already answered my next question which is about do you have a big project that are you currently working on… 

Yes, I’m having a solo exhibition here in Leith Makers, in November. So I do really want to be well prepared.

I want it to be a nice show, not just a few pieces. So I want to fill in the walls, and the stands, because the majority of my work is not something that you put on the walls. That’s why I came up with the idea of the frames.

It’s such a clever idea. 

Thank you. I thought it would be good to put something on the walls as well. 

So I’m really working now and making lots and lots of flowers just to fill in the frames. I am not making them the same. I want them to be really different..

Yesterday, we went to Drum Farm Antiques, it’s in the south of Edinburgh. It’s a huge warehouse full of antique stuff. I’ve got some new (to me) vintage frames from there. And I really do want them to be old. Not shining, not too polished. I really want them to be one-off. 

Do you have little frames as well? 

I have two, they are not large. But I want to have even smaller ones, maybe just for one flower, or one flower and some leaves. I’ve got lots of ideas about it but I still need to find the right frames because they need to be quite deep.

So that is where my attention is now. I’m hosting less masterclasses, I’m making less functional stuff and I’m just going on with preparation for the exhibition because time flies really very quickly – we will have summer soon and summer holiday vacations. I think that for at least a month, I won’t be able to do anything because we have family plans. And then you suddenly find yourself in September and it’s only a few months left and you still have lots of organisational issues you need to sort out before the exhibition. So it’s not as much time as it seems. 

Good for you for being prepared! 

[Laughs] I’m still not prepared! But I do realise that I need to be prepared, to be more focused on it otherwise I won’t get there. 

I look forward to watching it come together. This is the privilege of being your studio mate. 

Yeah, you can come any time and have a sneak peak. 

[Excited squeal] Thank you!

Can you tell me about a normal day in your life?

Okay, a normal day of my life is that I still have my job that feeds me [both laugh]. So my normal day will start – I come quite early after dropping off my kid at school and then at least up until noon I will be working on my main job. But then I switch on anything that needs my attention here in this studio. That might be glazing. That might be making stuff. Today, I put on some gold luster firing. So I glazed and put on the firing, and then I started making the rosehips for the frames.

And this combination of my main job and the artistic part in the studio while I’m actually here in the studio makes me be more effective with the first part because I want to finish it quicker, you know?

And I suppose, if you’re here and seeing all the things… 

Yes, you know, they’re quite a motivation for me. For example, I can come here and put on the firing or do something quickly to speed up processes or maybe put some slip casting, or whatever, and then keep on doing my job and this stuff can wait to be settled, to dry, or whatever is needed to be done.

Then I’ll be working until maybe three or four in the afternoon. It depends on the time that my daughter finishes at school. And then I’ll pick her up and go home. 

So that’s a very average day of mine. 

Then I take its family stuff in the evenings?

Yeah, I might come back to my work if something needs my attention during those hours when I was doing my artistic stuff, something still needs to be caught up or finalised. So I can spend another hour or two doing this in the evening. But family stuff afterwards. 

Sounds like a nice balance.

Yeah, it is actually. But before I had the studio I thought that I was really very busy. But now, when I need to free several hours in a day for the studio work, I think, “okay, I was not that busy before. I shouldn’t have complained, because what was I doing? Why did I feel so busy?” [Both laugh]

It’s amazing what you can do when you have the right motivation. 

It is actually and the hours in day are the same!

But, yes, I started to be more effective maybe, and not to distract myself from work, you know this kind of procrastination, or “Let me have another cup of tea”, or maybe talk with somebody or whatever.

I used to work from home and there is always something you can be distracted with at home. Lunch preparation, or maybe just washing to be put out or something like that and the time is just running away quickly. When I’m here [at the studio], that’s why I’m not staying to work at home, I’m coming here because here I’m more effective. Because having all the creative work that is waiting for me, that makes me finish with my first part more quickly, deal with it more effectively.

That’s such a great technique. I might borrow that sometime .

Because if I stay home, I just have a useless day.

There’s always work to be done in the house. 

It is! There is always something. 

Always!

And when I stay at home I’m thinking “So I will do my work, and I will then do this, and this, and this, and this…”, and it’s a huge list of stuff!

And then you’re not finishing work properly and not ticking things off the list quickly. And you feel like, “oh gosh, I’m just useless. I’m not doing things properly.” Yeah, so here I feel I am more motivated and more effective.

That’s very relatable. 

Can you finish this sentence? If you really knew me you’d know…

Oh, you’d know that I’m quite an introvert and I drag myself out to talk to people! Especially in English because it’s sometimes really very difficult for me to catch up in conversations, or to be quick, or to be smart, or to joke in English, you know? So, I think I do really feel that in English I have a bit of another personality than I really am, that I have in my language. Because when you feel free to express yourself quickly, and maybe smarter it’s a little bit of a different feeling of yourself.

So is the Natalya that speaks Ukrainian less introverted?

I think she’s maybe more easy-going. Yes, I think so. 

That’s really interesting. Gosh, I hadn’t thought about that. It makes me wonder about my next question, which is do you have a favourite joke? 

Oh this is hard. I barely know any jokes in English. But this is one I quite like:

A student asks Picasso: “How do you know when a painting is finished?” 

Picasso replies: “When it sells.” [both laugh]

But for me, here, in English, it’s absolutely terra incognito. So I’m not picking up jokes and it’s really very difficult for me to tell jokes in English as well. 

How long have you been learning English for? 

Oh, quite for quite a long time. I started when I was six, but that was slow progress.

I used to be very good in the terms of grammar, linguistics, and whatever, but what I was lacking was experience with talking to people. Because you can know the language, and the words, and the vocabulary, and the grammar nicely, but if you are not talking to live people, then you’re having a problem and that was my problem.

Because I know that I know English. I understand it. I understand the films. I do read books, so this is all okay, but talking with people… And understanding, being quick with reactions and the answers, it was challenging for me, especially here because everyone has an accent, especially in Scotland. 

The Edinburgh accent is really fine, but we spent our first months near Glasgow and that was really very challenging. I doubted myself very much that I knew English at all. I couldn’t understand people, but the more you talk, the more you learn. The more you learn, the more confident you become to talk, and the more eager you become to talk to people. 

I feel that when we’re spending time at home together with my family, my husband and our kid, we’re talking in Ukrainian and then we don’t usually have friends, or community, or communication with somebody in English, I become a little bit stuck with words. You need some time to start to speak again. 

That makes sense.  Well, thank you for making the time to talk with me. I’m looking forward to watching your exhibition come together.

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You can see more of Natalya’s functional ceramics on this Instagram account and her artistic ceramics at this Instagram account

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If you enjoyed my interview with Natalya Babych, you might enjoy my other artist interviews.