We recently had the chance to connect with Natalya Nova and have shared our conversation below.
Good morning Natalya, it’s such a great way to kick off the day – I think our readers will love hearing your stories, experiences and about how you think about life and work. Let’s jump right in? What do the first 90 minutes of your day look like?
I usually wake up around 8am, make a simple cup of coffee, and walk to Othership. I move through my yoga practice in the sauna and end with a two-to-four minute ice bath. Even though I was born in Russia, the idea of willingly putting my body in ice always terrified me—until this year. I’ve been going since the end of February, and I’m already close to 200 visits. There’s something about that contrast—heat, cold, breath—that resets me better than any philosophy ever could. It’s the clearest way I know to steady my mind.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m an artist working across photography, painting, and storytelling. For the past sixteen years I’ve been interested in the ways we shape our reality — how perception shifts the world. In physics they call it the double-slit experiment; in life it’s simply paying attention. I’ve experienced both the magic and the shadows we can summon when we believe in them, and my work often lives in that tension.
I’m drawn to the places where memory, imagination, and the subconscious overlap — the moments that feel cinematic and alive. My pieces usually begin with something small: an emotion, a flicker of a dream, an image that refuses to leave me alone. From there it becomes a world.
I’ve shown my work throughout the U.S. and Europe, but what matters most to me is staying authentic — creating things that feel honest, a little mysterious, and aligned with where I am today. I follow instinct more than genre. And as my late friend Ian Cuttler used to say: “The best ideas are the ones you actually do.”
Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. What’s a moment that really shaped how you see the world?
My grandparents were the most thoughtful, resilient, quietly extraordinary people. My grandmother was a kind of earthly angel — she never said a bad word about anyone, and her whole life revolved around her family and her garden. My grandfather was the opposite kind of angel: restless, inventive, full of impossible dreams. He asked her to marry him only one week after meeting her, and they spent thirty wonderful years together.
When my grandfather was young, he wanted to be a pilot. They didn’t accept him into flight school, so he decided to fly anyway. He built his own paragliders. My childhood smelled like parachutes and open fields. “Polyoti” — flights — were part of the rhythm of my life.
Until that day.
He gave me two options — flights or the lake. For me there was only one option, always.
The paraglider had two seats — mine slightly above his — no walls, just a pole he used to steer the wings, and a propeller in the back. Everything was going according to plan when we took off, and then, around the height of a seven-story building, it got really quiet — the propeller stopped working — and we started going down. I was six and a half. I thought he wanted to show me a trick, a salto mortale. I remember trying to get his attention, screaming, “Grandfather, are we really doing this?”
He didn’t answer. He was thinking fast about how to protect me. He took the fall onto himself so I wouldn’t get hurt — brain concussion and a broken collarbone — and it felt like an eternity before people came to unbuckle me.
I cry every time I write this. I know he’s still here with me somehow — in another form, another world, the way Murakami says the dead stay close when you’re really listening. My grandfather was the love of my life, my protector, my reminder to live fully. My grandmother died thirty-three years later on the same day he did, as if they had made a pact.
They live in me. Their courage, their humor, their devotion. They are the compass I return to when I forget my direction.
What did suffering teach you that success never could?
Suffering showed me my patterns — the ones I inherited, the ones I created, the ones I didn’t know were running the show. It forced me to pay close attention to my thoughts and learn how to navigate them without becoming attached to every emotion that rises and falls. It taught me to keep a sense of humor about life, even when nothing feels funny.
And most importantly, it taught me that freedom isn’t some grand revelation — it’s a daily decision not to let pain become your identity. Every year I get better at it.
I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. Whom do you admire for their character, not their power?
I admire people who choose kindness with no audience, who keep their curiosity alive, who refuse to fake it just to fit in. Power never impressed me. Character does. I gravitate toward the resilient ones, the generous ones — the ones who stay awake in a world that often rewards sleepwalking.
Okay, we’ve made it essentially to the end. One last question before you go. When do you feel most at peace?
I feel most at peace when the world gets quiet — when I’m present and my mind isn’t pulling me into a story. In those moments everything becomes simple. My body settles, my thoughts make space, and I can just be.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.natalyanova.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/supernovaplayroom/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalya-nova-a5a337164
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP67epKtxRs
- Other: https://www.supernovaplayroom.com/edges
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