On December 10th, a “Kamchatka and the Urals: Open Dialogue” paintings exhibition opened at the SUSU Art Gallery.
The exhibition consists of about one hundred sketches and paintings created by Nadezhda Rusinova and Svetlana Kimlichenko over the recent years. Landscapes painted at the Kamchatka peninsula and in the South Ural region depict different seasons and weather: early spring with the snow still covering the ground but with the first flowers already about to bloom, or the sunny summer and the golden colours of autumn. One cannot help but admire the mastery of these painters from the Urals and the way they manage to show the beauty of nature on canvas. One feels something special and inimitable when looking at the paintings depicting the outskirts of the cities of Zlatoust and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, mountains and rocks, hills and volcanos, water bodies of the Urals and the seas washing against the shores of the Kamchatka peninsula. And of course, light sailing ships and seafaring vessels.
In her speech at the opening ceremony, research advisor of the SUSU Art Gallery, Head of the Department of Theology, Culture, and Arts of the SUSU Institute of Media, Social Sciences and Humanities, Professor Nataliia Parfentieva shared how this exhibition had been created, thanked everyone who had helped create it, and first and foremost, the exhibit curator and Head of the university Art Gallery Anatoliy Razuev. He noted that in terms of the number of exhibited works this exhibition is a record-setting for the Art Gallery.
Nadezhda Rusinova is a member of the Union of Russian Artists and organizer of art travels: painters gather in special groups and travel to paint beautiful places.
“We lived at Kamchatka for a month and a half, we painted and created there. Initially, I had organized a 12-days art trip, but we stayed longer. And possibly, we will continue to paint this place,” said Nadezhda Rusinova. “After all, the unique nature of Kamchatka and its powerful but at the same time pure and extraordinary energy, its sea, hills and volcanoes make us feel admired, inspired and captivated by them. This cannot leave anyone indifferent. Kamchatka just grips you and makes you take a fresh look at many things and the world around you…”
Graduate of the SUSU Faculty of Mechanical Engineering Svetlana Kimlichenko is an amateur artist and a poet, too. At the opening ceremony, she recited the verses that she had written after her trip to Kamchatka. By the way, the collection of her poems is presented right next to her sketches at this exhibition.
“We came up with the idea of this exhibition last year, when we went on an art trip to Kamchatka and met creative people and volcanologists there,” shared Svetlana Kimlichenko. “When we were talking to them, we thought how wonderful it would be to show Kamchatka to residents of the Urals. So, we managed to organize exhibitions both on the Far East and here. When creating our works, we were finding inspiration in the landscapes, the power of volcanoes, and the ocean. So it was simply impossible not to paint and not to depict all that beauty. And I’m very happy to be here, at my alma mater again.”
The plates with captions contain detailed information about the most interesting natural objects depicted in the paintings, such as Lake Turgoyak and volcanoes of Kamchatka. In addition, samples of rocks (both the Ural rocks and the Kamchatka volcanic rocks) are exhibited in glass cases.
The exhibition is open December 10 till January 24, 2026, 10:00 till 17:00, Saturdays 10:00 till 15:00, Sunday is a day off. Free entrance.