Olga Volchkova’s goal is to “canonize all the living creatures of nature.” 

No, she doesn’t hold a high position in the church. In fact, she’s not particularly religious. But she is an artist who trained at Tver Icon School, in Tver, Russia, where she learned to create paintings of Christian narratives in a traditional style.   

Her new show Olga Volchkova: Forest Communities represents the past two years of the now-Eugene artist’s life. And her mission, you could say, has been advanced by 18 new paintings which are on display from Oct. 16 to Nov. 28 at Karin Clarke Gallery in downtown Eugene. 

In the show, you’ll find a pelican painted in the manner the baby Jesus is normally represented in traditional Christian art, feeding fish to other animals. You’ll see a hummingbird painted among spiderwebs set on a dark background, so that the threads of the web look like stars. In another painting, you’ll find a tree depicted as a saint.  

Chatting at her home, she explains how her art celebrates the different ways that plants and animals are interconnected, depending on ecological communities. She prefers old-growth forests, she says, to ones that have been cut and newly planted because there are more species and relationships in those. 

That she studied religious painting is one of those things that, in retrospect, seems like good fortune, as it offered her a format, an approach, to making all of nature holy. 

She attended art school following the collapse of the Soviet Union, as churches reopened and religious scenes for altars were in high demand. But it was difficult to get by economically then, and following some of her friends, who came to America, Volchkova moved to New York City where she worked in restoration, another trade she learned in art school. 

Her painting skills are traditional, precise and meticulous. But her personal ideology is unique. So is the gesso on each of her paintings, which she makes using ingredients like “marble dust” and garlic juice.  

She met her husband after moving to San Francisco, and from there they came to Eugene. Sitting at the table in her dining room, with a view of her garden, she speaks of nature as “giving.” 

Her relationship with the forest goes back to childhood. Raised in Tver, a city of about 400,000, she visited her grandmother, Alexandra, on the weekends. Her grandmother managed a farm outside of town close to the woods, which is where she first began to explore the relationships that fascinate her to this day. 

The woods were “magical” to her in Russia, as they are in Oregon. To conduct research for Forest Communities, she spent time hiking forested areas near and around Eugene such as Mount Pisgah, Alsea Falls Recreation Site and Brice Creek Trail. 

“What is a Hummingbird’s Nest Made Of?” is an exception, as the inspiration for this painting came not from the forest but from her own front yard, where her garden is so dense it practically hides her house from the street. One day, she spotted a hummingbird in her magnolia tree. Afterwards, she inspected its nest and found it was made of organic materials from her yard, such as lichen, dandelion fluff and spider webs. 

“I was so fascinated,” she says, referring to how the garden she’d planted had eventually enabled the tiny bird to build its home.

Each painting represents some aspect of interconnectivity in an ecosystem that fascinates her in this manner. Ultimately, she hopes that her art will encourage other people to see nature as she does, as something that should be revered. 

Like a saint. Or God.

In “Forest Treasures of Fall and Winter,” the artist personifies the seasons as an angel with wings made of blue elderberries. Elderberries, she explains, can be used to make herbal remedies. The angel is holding leaves too. What types are those? And what kind of animal is that on the spirit’s head? How well do you know the environment in which you live, you might find yourself wondering, and would you be aware if any of it were to change? 

Come to the gallery for the opening reception 5:30 pm Oct. 16 to meet the artist and hear her unravel the connections and layers in her paintings, as only she can. 

Olga Volchkova: Forest Communities is at Karin Clarke Gallery, 760 Willamette St. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Friday noon to 5:30 pm and Saturday 10 am to 4 pm.