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The winner of the Best In Show award at the recent Celebration of the Arts moved to Rutherford County about four years ago after she and her family experienced the beauty of the Blue Ridge Parkway while touring the area from their home in New York City.
Inesa Kayuta, an immigrant from the European country of Belarua, Inesa Kayuta, was born in 1966 and lived in the capital city Minsk. She left Minsk and went to New York City where she and her family lived approximately 20 years.
But it was the ride on the Parkway that convinced her they didn't have to live in New York City.
"We drove down the Blue Ridge Parkway one day, sometimes descending into the fog, sometimes ascending above the clouds," she began. "The beauty of this area captured us right away. I was behind the wheel and suddenly I thought, 'can't we live here'?"
"The tears came to my eyes," she said.
Kayuta said she spent 20 years trying to get by in NYC, "which was too expensive for me as an immigrant. I have never been able to get back to painting," she said.
When she came to Rutherford County that all changed.
"I knew I could do it. It all comes together here, natural beauty, charm of small towns, Asheville's creativity and soulfulness of local folks," she said.
During the 20 year hiatus from painting, Kayuta said it had given her the time to understand what she wanted to paint and how she wanted to paint based on her life experience.
"The older I get, the more I appreciate simple things. The joy of a new day in early morning bird song. Silent rainy sadness. Foggy quietude," she said.
She said she understands now the value of the simplicity that increases more sharply with life experience.
"I have already started to deeply understand my parents and my children equally well. The loneliness and solitude of old people and the bright emotional intensity of the young."
Kayuta said she wants her painting to capture people, extending their 2D space into the space of the observer while also engaging them emotionally.
"A sort of therapy for our racing age. And that's also the difference between the domineering NYC and wonderful NC," she said.
Kayuta said she tries a variety of different painting techniques, paying special attention to light and texture. I also don't want to turn away from good realistic art mastery education that I have received back in my homeland".
She tries to create her own painting language, making her pictures full of feelings and at the same time being 'Here' and Now' using 3D effects with the illusion of presence in a viewer's life.
"I paint them extremely realistic, sometimes letting the objects go outside of the painting frame. I want to confuse the viewer's eyes," she added.
Kayuta graduated from Minsk Art College named Glebov (painting class of Oleg Matievich) in 1986 and graduated as Digital Media Artist at TCI College, New York in 2004.
While in New York City she worked as a graphic designer.
She moved to Spindale in 2018 with her family and is an independent painter and works in her studio in Spindale.
Among her art exhibitions included eight years (1992-2000) as a participant of solo and group exhibitions, Art-Planeair all around the world.
Since coming to western North Carolina she has participated in a number of juried art shows.
In addition to her Best in Show Prize at the Celebration of the Arts, Kayuta has received awards also in Western North Carolina.
She received the Best In Show prize at the 17th Annual Juried Art Exhibition, Grace Mills River Gallery and in 1995 was laureate of "White Art Festival" in Minsk, Belarus.
