I am a Rotterdam based illustrator and tattoo artist.
I was born in a small city near Moscow, where I was raised until my 16th birthday. In 2015 I moved to Costa Rica to finish an international high school in Santa Ana. It was a difficult but rewarding time that I will never forget. 

After graduating, I really wasn’t sure what my next step was going to be. I almost decided to study marine biology in the US but something felt off about that. I remember my father’s email – long and proper, when I told him that I wanted to study art. He wrote how confusing it was that I would change my mind at the last possible moment. I wrote back to him later that day. People giggle when I tell this story, such formal means of communication we had between us. But that’s who we were – two goofy people sending each other serious emails. 

In the end, nobody questioned my decision further. It made sense that I would do art, as it is something that remained constant in my life. I started drawing as young as I can remember. I would draw comic books in collaboration with my sister about a strange lady in distress and an even stranger old witch; I would rip the wallpaper of the was and begin adorning my room in 8-year-old bas-relief (bless my parents for letting me do that, that’s wild) 

In eider gevaal  (as we say in Dutch), I went to art school in Rotterdam. Guided by fear of no prospects Graphic Design became my study of choice. It remained so for about 8 months, that’s when I stormed out of a semester kick-off presentation after hearing the word interface one too many times.

The illustration department was ready to accept me, as if they knew I was coming. It felt good to do something that I could be good at, I had a lot of fun creating within the academic restrictions and more importantly I’ve met some incredible people. As Jonas Mekas said: “You should go to art school to meet friends.”

I graduated in 2022, the year that Russia invaded Ukraine. I remember feeling scared and lost, not knowing what to do or what to expect. As my family went wandering through different countries, I kept on working and building my life in the Netherlands. Sometimes the best thing you can do is finish what you’ve started. 

One might think that I should have been writing about my art practice and what I like to draw but these are things that I only recently started learning about myself. For the last 10 years everything I did and thought about was getting an EU passport and making sure that a place I was born in didn’t get to decide what my life would look like.

I got naturalised in February 2025. Small step for the human kind and giant step for little Mari. I still can’t believe it every now and then.

If you read all the way to hear, you have my respect and gratitude. I didn’t expect to go into the full memoir mode when I sat down to write this, but here we are. 

Sincerely,
Masha.