Vera Kerinskaya, a 39-year-old artist based in Kaluga, Russia, has established a distinct creative business producing handcrafted embroidery from a studio inside a former Lutheran church. She describes her aesthetic as village baroque, creating smooth stitch embroidery and patchwork textile compositions mounted on wooden bases or antique carved frames. Her work incorporates color choices from Russian folk art and visual themes reminiscent of peasant house paintings and northern church woodcarvings. Embroidery began as a personal hobby roughly a decade ago and has since developed into her primary occupation and sole source of income.
Kerinskaya built her current career following significant hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic. For seven years, she operated a children's club offering creative workshops in Moscow. When the pandemic forced the club to shut down due to lost income, she returned to Kaluga with her family. Her relationship subsequently ended, leaving her as a single mother with two young children in a rented apartment without financial resources.
Through independent work and persistence, Kerinskaya re-established her life in Kaluga, located southwest of Moscow. She purchased her own apartment, secured two large rooms in the former church building for her studio, and established a reliable income stream. She stated that she considers herself a happy, self-made individual who achieved her stability through her own labor and determination.
Kerinskaya was born in Kaluga and spent much of her childhood with her grandmother, describing herself as an orphan with living parents. Watching her grandmother embroider introduced her to handcrafts at an early age. She pursued formal education at the Philological Faculty of Kaluga State Pedagogical University while simultaneously attending evening classes at a local art school. She then moved to Moscow and graduated in 2014 from the art history faculty at the V. I. Surikov Moscow State Academy Art Institute, one of Russia's most prominent art schools.
After completing her studies in Moscow, Kerinskaya taught at a local art studio before launching her children's club. When the pandemic disrupted that enterprise, she transitioned entirely to embroidery, turning her long-standing interest into a full-time professional career.
Crafting textile art in Kaluga
Kerinskaya begins each piece by stretching canvas over a frame, sketching the subject, selecting a palette, and stitching by hand. She uses a wide variety of threads, including wool, cotton, acrylic, large knitting bobbins, and vintage Soviet embroidery floss. She expressed a preference for older threads because their colors appear faded, soft, and uneven compared to modern alternatives.
She refrains from covering her embroideries with glass, allowing the fabric to interact directly with light and air. She explained that open textiles age and fade naturally over time, providing viewers with an intimate, tactile connection that glass would otherwise obscure.
Her framing process relies heavily on antique items gathered from flea markets, online sellers, and antique dealers. She frequently purchases rustic carved wooden frames first, keeping them in her studio until a suitable visual idea comes to mind. In other instances, she conceives a subject first and then searches for a matching frame. She seeks a harmonious pairing between the existing texture of the aged wood and the embroidered image.
Artistic vision over academic technique
Despite her background in art history and her qualification as an art teacher, Kerinskaya acknowledged that she does not know how to draw. She explained that being an artist is fundamentally a way of thinking rather than mastery of academic draftsmanship. She noted that while classical museum masters combined deep feeling with academic precision, many contemporary art academy graduates produce technically flawless work that lacks spirit.
She stated that true art functions only when it carries what she termed the breath of the Lord. Her spiritual views took shape during a severe personal crisis 15 years ago, which coincided with her initial turn toward embroidery. Seeking a sense of guidance to address childhood feelings of abandonment, she found support in imagery of God the Father and the Virgin Mary.
Kerinskaya described her faith as a personal feeling of kinship, which informs the approachable, humanized Christian figures in her artwork. She makes a clear distinction between personal faith and organized religion, stating that she currently has no interest in the official church.
Balancing business and creative identity
Combining spiritual creation with commercial necessity presents an ongoing challenge for Kerinskaya. She noted that artists often face a cultural expectation to remain impoverished. To support her family, she creates commercial pieces during the day and reserves late evenings, after putting her children to bed, for personal artistic projects.
Kerinskaya operates without gallery representation, managing all aspects of her business independently. She oversees public relations, exhibition schedules, sales, and digital marketing. She credited her training in philology and art history with providing the communication skills needed to articulate her artistic concept to the public. Talking and writing about her work serves as a practical form of therapy that helps her refine her ideas.
She argued that professional visibility requires deliberate effort, recalling a story about an underground Soviet artist named Korobkov. Korobkov consistently declared himself the finest artist in the community whenever asked. When Western art dealers arrived in Russia during Perestroika, his long-standing reputation led to significant sales at international auctions.
Kerinskaya noted that talent alone is common, but success requires courage and energetic self-promotion. She noted that former Real Madrid manager Jose Mourinho expressed a similar sentiment when he observed that talent attracts attention, but character allows an individual to fulfill that talent.
Family life and the discipline of happiness
In her household, Kerinskaya maintains an environment free of televisions and artificial background noise. She limits her children's access to smartphones and digital devices. When her children express boredom, she considers it a productive state that prompts them to engage in constructive activities like building with Lego, drawing, or playing outdoors.
Kerinskaya described happiness as an active discipline rather than a passive condition. She stated that while life contains constant difficulties and chaos, a mature individual makes a conscious effort to maintain inner balance. She agreed that happiness functions as a reward, while expressing a wish that people did not have to earn it through struggle.
