“Faces. I love faces,” gushed freshman art student Yulia Khaitov. “In my digital art class in high school, we all got paired up with a classmate and our assignment was to age them on Photoshop — and not gracefully. Double chins, gray hair, wrinkles…it was pretty weird. I had to make my friend look eighty years old.”
Khaitov, whose passion is portraiture, has an extensive history in studio art. She attended the Bergen County Academy for Visual and Performing Arts, a magnet school in her native New Jersey that required her to submit a studio art portfolio in eighth grade for the admission process. According to Khaitov, “Everyone in the visual art school was amazing.” Most of her classmates are now enrolled at highly selective art schools like RISD and Cooper Union, but she chose Connecticut College because of the balance she craved between studio art and her other academic interests. Plus — she speaks openly and unapologetically about her application process — RISD wasn’t an option. “I initially wanted to apply, but my parents wouldn’t let me. They didn’t think I could be an artist and maintain the lifestyle I’m accustomed to, and I agree with them.”
Despite her evident talent and focus in the art studio, Khaitov is modest, often speaking more excitedly about her classmates’ successes than her own. When she speaks about Conn’s art department and her own classes, though, her passion shines through. Khaitov is clearly energized by the challenges she’s found in her art classes.
“One of the hardest assignments was blind contour drawing, which is drawing something in front of you without looking at your paper at all, and rendering the object with one continuous line,” Khaitov said about her Drawing 205 class with Professor Brad Guarino. For another assignment, “[Professor Guarino] cut up squares and circles, put them on the floor and said, ‘Draw them.’ It was by far the most challenging assignment for me this semester.”
Khaitov isn’t set on studio art as her intended major, which makes her magnet-school past and ongoing passion even more intriguing. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I’m thinking about double majoring with psychology, but I might end up just minoring in art. But I’m definitely going to minor, at least.”
Painting by Yulia Khaitov
Khaitov’s combination of a finely tuned eye for art and an aptitude in math and science helps further explain her decision to come to Conn over a school for visual arts. “I started drawing really early, but I never thought I’d seriously pursue art,” she said, as if stumbling upon her own talent for the first time. Khaitov is often surprised by praise, and at times shies away from it altogether — a touchstone of a dedicated artist.
One thing Khaitov laments about art at Conn as opposed to her hometown of Oakland, New Jersey, is that it’s farther from a major metropolitan area. Says Khaitov, “I was born in the Ukraine, and when I was two, I moved to Israel. In the fourth grade, I moved to New York City, and after that, New Jersey. For as long as I’ve lived in the United States, I’ve had this incredible access to the art world [in NYC].” She has held internships at art galleries like Exit Art in Hell’s Kitchen, something that’s helped her remain in touch with other artists. However, Conn has provided her with resources she didn’t have in New Jersey, like the figure drawing sessions offered by Fluxus.
“Access to models [in New Jersey] was expensive and inconvenient, and at Conn it’s right here. It’s been really great … now I’m drawing from life, and that’s really different. It requires a whole new skill set than drawing from a photograph.”
Khaitov is honest about what she recognizes to be her own shortcomings. “I always stress realism and naturalism, and I try to represent things as they appear in nature, which is something that the art teachers here are encouraging me to break out of and explore.” When she opens up and shows her work, she’s excited about where she’s been as well as her future at Conn. It’s not about her own successes, though; she brushes past praise to reexamine her work. She points out deep wrinkles, creases and suppressed smiles in her painted faces. These are the subjects of her constant fascination.
