You paint intriguing scenes where multiple things are happening at once. Your paintings are quite cinematic—like a moment captured in time, similar to photojournalism, for me. How do you usually start a piece?
I often start by painting the linen with one sort of unifying color. I cut off a little piece, and then I just try different things and see if there are any interactions with pastels or other colors that I find interesting. And then I try to incorporate it into the actual piece. There’s a lot of pastels. There’s also acrylics, but it’s very liquid acrylic, almost like watercolor. So a lot of the flatter colors and the background colors are achieved through wet, acrylic paint, and then on top of it, I use pastels. So it’s a combination, and it’s always on unprimed fabric.
Do you take a lot of photographs or do you mostly work from your imagination? Do you sketch out an idea before the process of painting the linen?
It’s really a combination of both. I do take a lot of photos when I’m out, and I always pay attention to things in the landscape that make me feel a certain way about the space or characters. I take photos, but I never work directly from photos. I never depict any situation I see in a literal, direct way. The scenes are made up, but they’re inspired by little fragments of things that I see. Sometimes I refer to some of the photos that I make, and I sketch using those photos. But then in the end, the final result is a very made-up thing that’s more inspired by seeing something than literally depicting something.
Sasha Brodsky Memo to a Fool**, **2026. Pastel and acrylic on canvas, 19 x 27 1/2 x 1 in.
I feel like I can’t place the location of your scenes. They feel like they belong in multiple different countries at once.
The important thing for me, and the things that I notice and the things that I take photos of, are often very transient and fleeting [moments] that feel like they’re about to disappear. The little details. I think every city has those details. This body of work is mainly inspired by New York, but there were plenty of things like that in Moscow where I grew up mostly… I would’ve found them in different places if I happened to live in a different town. Sometimes the things that are fleeting show you the overall atmosphere of the place, more than the things that are stable.
I can feel the transience. These are moments at crossroads, like you stopped time. It feels like there are lot of strangers, people who don’t know each other. It’s not necessarily a meeting. It does feel like something you see right as it happens.
Yeah. Also the architectural elements are not going to stay for a very long time. Oftentimes I would literally take a picture of some kind of empty lot somewhere. I had a painting in a group show with Margot Samel that had this little blue shed. The painting is called Blue Shed, and it was based around this little tiny building that I saw in Brooklyn. And then just the other day I was walking past that same spot and that little blue building was gone. Things that I pay attention to seem to disappear very quickly, and it’s almost like I’m trying to catch them.
I want to talk about the vibrancy in your color palette, because when I think of Moscow, where you’re from, I imagine all these cement blocks of apartments. It is kind of gray in my mind, but I suppose New York can feel that way.
Moscow is very faded. It makes me think of a funny story that happened years ago. I was helping my friend who was shooting his film in Moscow. He was joined by this mutual friend who was the director of photography on this project, and he was from Chile. He studied in New York with us, but he was Chilean. He arrived in Moscow to shoot this film and my friend and I went to pick him up from the airport, and then drove for a very long time. There was a lot of traffic, and we kind of tried to drive near some sites, and we were very proud. We were like, “This is Moscow,” and we would drive down a huge prospect: Kutuzovsky Prospekt. And he was just silently looking at the window, and then he just said, “Get some paint, man.” Because everything, to him, seemed so washed out and faded.
Sasha Brodsky Blue Shed, 2025. Pastel and acrylic on canvas, 18 x 15 1/4 in.
When in your life did you start to make art? I know you kind of started as an illustrator.
I guess I realized pretty early on, because I come from a family of artists. My surroundings as I grew up were all art-related. And not that there was any pressure to become an artist, but it was almost in a way a predestined thing. And then I studied illustration at SVA, and after I graduated, I tried very briefly a few commercial illustration projects. But I quickly moved away from it and kind of realized that it’s not something I want to do. I did learn a lot studying illustration. I think it was an important step, for sure, but I haven’t done a single illustration project since I graduated. Illustration, it’s never a completely individual thing. You always work with someone and you take notes and revisions, and I just realized that I wouldn’t want drawing to become this thing in my life that is a job in a more practical sense. I’m glad I didn’t go this route.
I always think of my work more as a drawing than painting, and I kind of think of myself as more of a draftsman. There are works on paper on fabric, and they’re stretched and they have colors, so automatically they’re considered painting—which they are, in a way. But to me, the process of making them has to do a lot more with drawing than painting.
Are there things that your family instilled in you that you think are important?
I’d say I think the important thing is that [my parents] never, ever tried to teach me or my other siblings anything, but at the same time, they teach you everything just by, I don’t know, being themselves. I grew up watching my father work a lot, and it’s definitely a giant influence and will always be. But I think there was never any forcing… If anything, my parents were always kind of against art education. My dad always saw it as this way to turn a very individualistic quality that a kid has into something very kind of generic. And so he was always very skeptical of drawing classes for kids. So that definitely made a huge difference in my life.
Sasha Brodsky Marchers, 2026. Pastel and acrylic on linen, 26 1/8 x 38 x 1 in.
Do you have any other artists who inspire you or who you feel a part of their artistic lineage?
Rather than particular artists that I can think of that made an effect on this kind of work, I think it’s more like, as you grow up, you have these phases of obsessions with different artists. And then you grow out of some of it and you move on, but each one leaves something in your mind that you subconsciously refer to in the future, when you work. There were a hundred phases like this, and I’m certain that each one of them left something. But I have a very vivid early memory of when, at home, we had many, many art albums, and I remember being glued to the Breugel album and the Hieronymus Bosch albums, and just being obsessed with looking at these really multi-figured, super detailed paintings. I wouldn’t say now that I reference it directly, but I know that it somehow probably left some kind of subconscious mark. When I was a teenager, there was a phase where I was really into George Bellows and these kinds of American realist painters, but Bellows in particular. And he was actually someone who painted really incredible New York urban scenes… When I started making etchings, I was really into a lot of printmaking and graphic art. And there was this artist Hercules Seghers, a printmaker who was incredibly innovative for his time, and he made mesmerizing etchings and landscapes.
Bosch makes sense because there’s so much happening… Similar to your work, you kind of have to spend time looking. I like this idea of phases, though—of specific moments in relation to inspiration.
It’s kind of the same way as when you’re in high school and there are bands that you listen to, then you become too mature for them. But they still leave something important for you, however childish they seem. When you get older, you would sometimes re-listen to something. It’s kind of a part of your personality.
Sasha Brodsky, Closing Time, 2025. Pastel and acrylic on canvas. 56 x 33 1/2 in.
What are you working on that you’re looking forward to? Is there anything that you feel like you want to accomplish in the next few years?
I mean, I’d love to have more shows here in the US. And this show with Margot [Samel] is my first solo show in New York. Which is very exciting for me because I’ve had shows in other places, but I’ve been living in New York for so long.
How long now?
11 years. And so much of my work has to do with New York and is inspired by New York. So it always seemed very important to show it here. And I’d love to keep showing and keep working on new shows, and just trying to make as much work as possible.
Sasha Brodsky recommends:
Beef Hui Mei at Spicy Village, especially in the winter, but really any time
Co-sleeping
Going to Jacob Riis beach at 8 AM on a very hot day to swim
Flaming Tunes’ self-titled album. I listen to it in the studio when I’m unsure what to do next.
Sitting next to a burning pot belly stove at McSorley’s when it’s freezing outside and drinking beer.
This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Mána Taylor.
Mána Taylor | Radio Free (2026-06-15T04:00:00+00:00) Artist Sasha Brodsky on capturing moments before they disappear. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2026/06/15/artist-sasha-brodsky-on-capturing-moments-before-they-disappear/
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