Nastya Norway doesn't think in series or exhibition projects. The unit of her artistic thinking is the stain. She perceives the world as an array of geometrical forms carrying an energy load. The silhouette of a loved one, a random impression from the streets, or an attractive object—anything can serve as a starting point if it catches the artist's eye.

Her drawings remain figurative, but Norway treats them as abstract images. From each silhouette that she captures, the artist distills an emotional essence that impacts the viewer directly, on a physical and emotional level, while associations and rationalization come secondary. Let's explore how this works with a few examples.

The source material for the drawing "Ghost" was a photograph of water droplets, whimsically floating on glass. This random form was digitally refined by the artist and then became a drawing. The title here is redundant and merely provides guidance for association. More important is the process of transforming a fleeting image into artistic form.

Graphic series "Masks" serve as another example, where a pretzel was used as the prototype. This work is more linear: the exquisite pretzel resembles a smiling face, generalized and transformed into a pattern. This process is reminiscent of a game of association, in which one must imagine what clouds resemble. In the artist's work, resemblance is secondary; her task is to extract a charged form from the visual stream; to conduct internal work to formulate what makes it stand out and what impact it exerts; and then to refine the spot in a way that would elicit energetic substance stored within.

Graphic series "Masks" serve as another example, where a pretzel was used as the prototype. This work is more linear: the exquisite pretzel resembles a smiling face, generalized and transformed into a pattern. This process is reminiscent of a game of association, in which one must imagine what clouds resemble. In the artist's work, resemblance is secondary; her task is to extract a charged form from the visual stream; to conduct internal work to formulate what makes it stand out and what impact it exerts; and then to refine the spot in a way that would elicit energetic substance stored within.

In the context of Nastya Norway’s work, the concept of Gestalt comes to mind, which German psychologists used in the early 20th century to explain how our perception works. The term "gestalt" stands for the spatial-visual form of perceived objects. Thanks to this phenomenon, our consciousness perceives holistic images rather than isolated lines and surfaces. The objects in the artist's drawings exist in a bipolar mode: they are ready-made gestalts, shaped by her consciousness, but as soon as the viewer defocuses their gaze, recognizable forms disintegrate into the simplest graphic elements. This organically flows from Nastya Norway's work process, which, although informed by the surrounding reality, does not paint from life, but rather processes impressions in a mental workshop. Norway describes this process in her artist's statement: "I spend a long time replaying the image of the object in my head, its tension and vulnerability, imagining it and mentally touching it."

People often appear in the artist's drawings. They are captured in motion: running, waving their arms, cowering in pain. Following the same graphic logic, the characters are reduced to silhouettes, whose exaggerated lines reveal the artist's relation to people. For example, in the painting "Peace," we see a man doing gymnastics. The figure is reduced to a sharply defined white spot, against which his black glasses, underwear, and boots are in contrast. The body is presented in exaggerated poses with limbs twisted as if on hinges. The figure exudes strength, yet simultaneously evokes a sense of menace with its crude machinery. The effect is enhanced by the contrast between the white body and the blood-red background, creating a sense of threat that permeates the canvas. In this image that she saw on streets, the artist depicts toxic masculinity and the danger emanating from those who exude it.

Despite the artist's outward gaze, she processes her inner feelings. "I don't think about others at all; I try to cope on my own," she said in an interview. Thus, Nastya Norway joins a long line of artists who use artistic practice as therapy.The charged emotional background is already visible at the color level: all-consuming black, alarming red, interrupted by dirty shades of blue and green.The silhouettes that emerge against this background fall apart, bodies crack, and the characters lose their heads and limbs. A deconstructed body reveals a painful state of mind. The straightforward visuals sometimes are complemented by text, transforming the drawings into a tragic comic strip.

This technique is used in the digital collage "I'm Not in a Cocoon," in which the phrase from the title accompanies a drawing of a pupated man — a portrait of the artist's brother, who suffers from schizophrenia. An amorphous spot, bathed in a uniform red, appears against a white background  — it’s a body curled up. A clearly defined face with a wary gaze peers out from this cocoon as if from the border between the inner and outer worlds.

Art emerges at the intersection of the personal and the universal. Sometimes the artist doesn't need to seek this balance; it's enough for personal experiences to strike a chord with the viewer, and then they resonate with them. Nastya Norway's works sometimes slip from a point of fragile equilibrium towards subjectivity. The scattered pages of her visual diary are yet to become a story that we can connect to. Nevertheless, the artistic method that she has developed and her distinctive visual signature foreshadow the next stage in her creative journey.