This is all mine, dear.

The exhibition "This is All Mine, My Native" is an artistic discourse not only on the work and life of one of Kaluga’s contemporary artists, T. Dukhanova, but also an invitation to reflect through her paintings on what is valuable to each of us — our loved ones, family, the places we call home, our small and large homelands, faith in God, and the search for the meaning of life.

Tatyana Anatolyevna Dukhanova (born 1955) is a well-known and recognized artist in the Kaluga region and beyond. She is an Honored Artist of Russia (2011).

Her artistic legacy is diverse and multifaceted. Over decades of constant creative work, the artist has managed to discover and express her artistic identity through visual imagery. Trained as a muralist, she has been able to realize herself in more than just that capacity. T. Dukhanova works extensively and fruitfully in easel painting and graphic art (watercolors, pastels), reinterpreting and refining the techniques she has discovered to suit her artistic goals. The artist’s work is based on works about the life and work of A. Pushkin, the lives of Orthodox saints, landscapes of the "Blessed Province," still lifes and genre scenes depicting the folk culture and crafts of our region, narrative canvases in which the author discusses the eternal problems of good and evil, motherhood, and other universal human values, as well as artistic notes by T. Dukhanova about those close and dear to her, in which she reveals her own personal story to the viewer.

The diversity of her themes also determines the artist’s varied style. In her genre works, T. Dukhanova emerges as a follower of the Russian realist school, combining narrative and colorful "painting." Filling her compositions with numerous details, she not only encourages the viewer to experience the proposed plot and follow its development, but also leads them to comprehend the deeper meanings embedded in the canvas.

In still lifes, landscapes, and portrait sketches designed to capture a moment of Being, to show the "here and now," the artist’s technique evolves. T. Dukhanova’s brushstrokes become freer and more rapid, the colors more vibrant and open, and the canvases acquire an impressionistic quality.

T. Dukhanova’s paintings and graphic works about Orthodox saints and Russian spirituality are distinguished by her desire to convey a state of silence and peace, inner concentration and fulfillment through tonal unity, and in graphic works through the transparency of the paint layer and its airiness.

A penchant for generalized, stylized images, assembled from large, localized spots akin to color ornamentation, is characteristic of the artist’s pastel works. These graphic sheets and cardboards, in their visual impact on the viewer, are akin to the monumental compositions of T. Dukhanova, which succinctly and succinctly convey the artist’s own worldview.