Kristine Melnikova
- Anna Lilli Garai
- Sep 26
- 4 min read
Kristine Karo, also known as Kristine Melnikova, works across painting, photography, and mixed media with a focus on texture, memory, and sensory experience. She often turns to everyday and natural materials such as cardboard, textiles, and sand, bringing a physical presence to her work that goes beyond the purely visual. In pieces like “Sensual Faculty” and “Dreaming in Yellow,” colour and texture carry equal weight, shaping the mood and drawing viewers in through both sight and sensation. Trained in contemporary arts and photography, Kristine has also run her own gallery and continues to develop projects that connect personal history with material experimentation and a curiosity for how art can be experienced as much as it can be seen.
Q: What first drew you to working with everyday materials like cardboard and textiles?
A: My first real introduction to natural and unconventional materials came during my Foundation Diploma in Art and Design. At the time, most students were set on creating oil portraits, but I felt drawn to take a different path. I wasn’t interested in the stress of waiting for oils to dry—instead, I wanted to explore immediacy, texture, and experimentation. That led me to acrylics and to integrating everyday materials that could transform a painting from a flat image into a more tactile and layered art piece. Using materials like cardboard and textiles, tissues, sand, etc. opened up new possibilities for surface, depth, and storytelling, and it has shaped the way I think about art as something that can be experienced not only visually but also physically.
Q: In works like "Dreaming in Yellow" or "Sensual Faculty," how do colour and texture come together for you?
A: For me, colour and texture are inseparable—they speak to each other and create the mood of the work. In "Sensual Faculty," the textures of the surface mimic the raw, tactile qualities of the shoreline: the granularity of sand, the softness of moss, the way light dances across water.
The restrained palette of whites and blues allows the physicality of the piece to come forward, inviting not just a visual response but a sensory one, as if the viewer could feel the scene through their eyes.
With "Dreaming in Yellow," texture becomes more expansive and fluid, a landscape of movement where colour leads the imagination. The golden tones radiate warmth and light, while the blue flows through like streams or dream fragments, creating contrast and depth. Here, texture doesn’t just ground the piece, it carries the energy of the colour, making the painting feel alive and shifting, like a dream you can almost touch.
Together, colour and texture in my work form a dialogue between emotion and sensation—they’re not separate elements, but different languages telling the same story.
Q: Your work often blurs painting and object. Do you see them as separate or part of the same language?
A: For me, painting and object are very much part of the same language. My work is meant to adapt itself to the viewer—whatever you see, experience, and feel becomes the true subject of the piece. While the visual language is shared, each person interacts with it in a different way, bringing their own perception, memories, and emotions into the dialogue. I don’t see a boundary between painting and object, but rather a fluid space where materials, textures, and senses combine to create an open-ended experience.
Q: Memory and personal history surface in your practice. How do you choose what to bring in and what to leave out?
A: For me, memory and personal history are not things I consciously filter in a strict way—they surface naturally through the process of making. Certain experiences, emotions, or fragments of memory resonate more strongly at a given moment, and those are the ones that tend to find their way into the work. I don’t usually set out to “include” or “exclude” specific memories; instead, I allow intuition and material experimentation to guide me. What doesn’t feel necessary or doesn’t connect with the work simply falls away on its own. In that sense, memory in my practice is both deeply personal and open-ended—it shapes the work, but it also leaves space for viewers to connect through their own histories.
Q: How do you see the role of play in your work, both for yourself while making and for people engaging with it?
A: Play is central to my practice, both in the making and in how I want viewers to engage. For me, play is about freedom—the freedom to experiment with materials, to push boundaries of texture and surface, and to let the work evolve beyond traditional definitions of painting. While creating, I follow my curiosity, layering, testing, and discovering new possibilities almost as if I am playing with the materials themselves.
For the audience, play becomes a way of entering the work. Because my pieces invite multi-sensory interaction, viewers are encouraged to explore my works through curiosity and playfulness. In this way, play allows each person to create their own personal experience of my artwork.
Q: Touch and surface are key in your pieces. What do you hope people notice when they encounter them up close?
A: When people encounter my work up close, I hope they notice the layers of sensation that go beyond the visual. Texture and surface are my obsessions—I see them as invisible threads that connect me to the viewer. By touching the work, or even just noticing its tactile qualities, people are invited into a dialogue that is physical, emotional, and intimate.
With "Sensual Faculty" in particular, I wanted to challenge the long-standing rule of “don’t touch” in galleries and instead open up an artwork that could be seen, felt, sensed, and even heard. I hope viewers notice that art can be a multisensory experience, one that resonates differently for each individual, depending on how they choose to engage.
