Artist Statement:
“It is our passion to work with complicated combinations of colours, we love to paint red on red or yellow on yellow. Each of our paintings includes numerous tones of one colour to convey exactly what our eye see and hearts feel. The process of painting engulfs our fully and the melody of our paintings just lifts us up and sweeps us away. There is always a possibility that we will change our style, however, our main focus will always remain the harmony of tone and colour in the painting. We want to evoke in our viewers happiness. There is so much stress in the world, especially in this computer age. Every time you open the newspaper, all you see are stories about victims and conflict. We like to make people happy.”

Biography:
Viatcheslav (Slava) and Natalia Tchistilines internationally acclaimed artists now residents of Canada.
Viatcheslav Tchistilines was born and raised in Russia. He earned his Master's degree in Commercial and Industrial Interior Design from the very prestigious Kharkiv State Institute of Arts and Industrial Design in Ukraine in 1980.
Natalia Tchistilines was born and raised in Ukraine. She earned her Master's degree in Commercial and Industrial Art -Artistic Design in the same university - Kharkiv State Institute of Arts and Industrial Design.
Slava and Natalia painted with oil on canvas in realistic manner in Europe. They were also engaged in monumental murals and teaching. Their realistic paintings are in many collections in Germany, Poland, France and Israel. Upon arrival to Canada, they started encaustic media, which is very old, traditionally taking its roots in Egypt and Byzantine.

After establishing themselves in Canada, the Tchistilines registered a business identity under name of SLAVA TCH. As a name Viatcheslav splits into two Viatche and Slava and in Russian language Slava means glory. The TCH stands for Tone, Colour, and Harmony. Taken as a whole, their company name SLAVA TCH stands for the Glory of Tone, Colour and Harmony.

Natalia and Viatcheslav Tchistilines are bright examples of artists who synthesize this ancient, long dormant medium with expressionistic representational art. The Canadian couple completes one another rather than compete with each other. Their encaustic paintings present their own life-long search for new tones and striking color combinations. Their paintings were cast in an archaic technique, which flourished between the 2nd and the 9th centuries A.D., and then died out because of its difficult and complicated nature. The ancient method mixing paint pigments heated or burned in with melted beeswax, known as encaustic (from the Greek, enkaustikos: "to burn in"), was extensively employed in Egyptian bas-relief and Byzantine icon painting, but has been rarely used in the 1100 years since.

Encaustic painting is enjoying a revival. But the Tchistilines are not labouring under the sculptural spell of melting wax with pigments. But they are creating intense surfaces of three-dimensional worlds which are brilliantly lightened up with luminous paint.

The longing for the ideal is the main theme of SLAVA TCH canvases. The result is a sincere, gem-like painting, which awakens our imagination and naive outlook on the world. These mythical, sacramental paintings proved to be of great interest to collectors and public on international art market.

You can learn more about the artists on their website: http://www.artslavatch.com