Series “Memory”
It is an extremely personal series of artworks.
It is combined by the idea that every human has a box of memory left when the life is ended.
You can find their very personal things both material possessions and emotional assets which reflect the most important moments of life, sometimes they’re valueless and weird even for the closest.
In this series of artworks, some family heirloom (furtniture, mirrors, utencil) is used as a ground for the works creation, as well as other personal stuff, images, imprints, blood drops, cardiograms or their symbolic representation.
Memory. 2015 glass, oil 57х62 cm
The central work of the same named series.
The impulse to create this piece of art was a quote from the book F. Perls (they say, it belongs to Nietzsche): Pride and Memory were fighting. It was like that, -said the Memory. No, the Pride objected, -It was otherwise. And the Memory stepped back.
It was an honest attempt to make my own patchwork of reminiscences of the most valuable life moments.
The gaps – transparent pieces of glass – mean something left behind my memory or having undetermined value, some hope for the future.
The picture is made from pieces of glass I’ve collected and polished, which are glued to transparent glass 60×70 cm in size.
Some pieced are grinded roughly, some just lightly reflecting the sharpness of memories.
I tried to make the composition centered where the important elements, bigger glass pieces, are an eye catcher, and the far they are from the center, the smaller the glass pieces are, merging with the background.
Virtually every image, like a diary page, carries certain stories from my life. The picture was created during 2015, I think in 2020 it would look different.
Verse. 2009. glass, oil, mirror 40х50 cm
This is a piece of an old mirror from the furniture that stood in the room where I once lived. Here the figure of the girl is depicted, as if in the steam mirror of a bath, the other side of the painting of figure is displayed.
Using a white-tinted surface with rubbed letters, I wanted to create the effect of text written on a misty mirror. The embossed texture of the cement in the lower part of the background is used to enhance the contrast between the rough heavy wall and the light steam on the mirror.
Two suitcases. 2015 glass, oil, ink 40x50 cm
Since the war in Donbass has been started, our relatives from Yasynuvata have lived with us. In the past, before the shooting attacks, we often visited them. And now we were confused, that they had taken just a few things with them living the rest in a big house they had been nest building all their life before the war… My mom suffered from Stalin’s purges when she was a child (her father was a in a camp for the political prisoners, the house was grabbed, and they with her mother and brother had to wander). Now she tried to gulp back her tears when we ‘re touching that situation in our chats.
In fear, I asked myself how could we pack all our life just in two suitcases?
The composition is placed on a transparent glass (and the background is optional – a wall or something else) to emphasize uncertainty of the situation. It is created in line with the calico ornament when the pattern covers all space. I did my best in strictly following the lines to place the symbols of real things living in my house to make it looks like a font in the text. I wanted to reach the effect of the printed page, at the very first glance.
I wanted to accent the contrast between the reality of the things and conventionality of two suitcases. For that purpose, the things were painted , and two suitcases were left transparent outlined by a dashed line.
Limited by a row size, objects have got their sizes and proportions (in reality the utensil is less than a tree, and a cat is less than a house) are aimed to focus your attention on the absurdity and senselessness to pack all possessions, plants, into suitcases regardless emotional connection.
Autumn rain. 2000 glass, oil 30х21
Glass appliques
Water strips atop and from below
Rain between them and in the drop there are chrysanthemum petals, umbrellas, grapes and apples, web with a spider, dark humid soil, thermometer shows about zero
REMINISCENCE ABOUT THE JOURNEY..1998 glass, oil 20х33
Glass appliques covered by glass, on every piece of glass – a painting,
At first they are located almost in chess order, then spontaneously, and after that – again in chess rhythm
Reminiscence about sweet moments of childhood when we traveled to grandma and grandpa’s farm on Rivnenschyna area.
First glass piece symbolizes the journey by bus, then by train, by foot.
Blue hut, kitchen gardens, glass of milk, apple tree, small garden, view of village, stove,
Fire, pitcher, smoke form the fireplace
Cellar, stairs, view from cellar, tasty red currants close by
Flowers fenced from hens, dark forest near by,
Own haycock, kolkhoz haycock
Neighbor hut, not plastered, mallows near it,
Grnadma’s hut, paraffin lamp, home-distilled vodka in the cupboard
Stove in the yard, where the potatoes were boiled for home animals
Well, apple tree not far from it,
Colorful shawls that were a reward to grandma from people for help in organization of festivities and just for assistance
Letters
And a dot.
Dyptych Windows. (process) 60х70 each. glass, oil
Series Memory. Dyptych Windows.
The diptych gets its origin in times before the Internet invention.
At that time, I was a graduating student and all time I was kept by thoughts about the nesting period, the necessity to make a choice. What should I do next? I was speculating about the value of an ordinary human life against the value of an artist or a leader lives, the price paid for the liberty, and the price paid for being fascinated with the work you do.
At one of the fests, I guess it was aт anniversary of our art school, I became a subject of the dispute between two foreigners. One of them lived abroad all his life, he travelled a lot, collected the works of art. His partner in conversation had been living for more than 10 years in Munich, and actually he was a graduate of the art school.
The first man was insisting that so young and talented girl as I was should travel a lot, and the other one replied that he knew so many people never having left Munich, they spent their life in the same streets, went to their offices located in the neighboring streets, their longest travel was to the suburbs but they were completely happy with that.
I remembered that dispute because it somehow resonated with the popular discussion about the woman in art, where a woman had to make a choice between the art and family.
The first part of the Dyptych is the apple tree, which is seen through my kitchen window. It is a symbol of stability. There’s a saying: if you do not like somthing, then move; you aren’t a tree.
Sometimes people are tied by the circumstances the same way as trees by roots.
They are connected by strong relationship, it could be great anyway, with those who have a good job, go to school, have friends, have some wishes and desires, and fully live their lives.
And how great it would be if you could move alongside.
The composition of the Dyptych is not occasional.
At those times when the photos were rare, not so common as now, many of my relatives had their photo albums framed on the walls. The family photos were fixed behind the glass, later the photos from travels were added to the expositions.
The first picture of the diptych (so called home) looks like a calendar. There’s a window looking to the garden, and the same landscape is repeated in different seasons of the year. My intention was to make a viewer unconsciously look for distinctions in similar pictures.
The second picture of the diptych (so called Wanderings) was composed as a photo album full with the photos taken in different trips (imaginary, virtual, and real ones).
The main features of my creative process is that sometimes it grabbed me totally, and existing on my own wave creates a chaos in the surroundings. And being stopped by a sudden thought I could find myself drawing with a spoon in my hand, the food was not salted at all, and the salt pot was found in the fridge. The situations was comic, sometimes inconvenient, sometimes dangerous.
Several years ago, at the time of my personal crisis, I came back to reading the stories of Ray Bradbury I liked so much in my childhood. For a while, I had to abstract myself from complicated family issues and awful choice between the drawing and family. But I completely forgot how sore his stories could be.
The story about the astronaut’s son, who was dreaming about the space. But the father did all he could to shut his son off from that idea.
At one of his stays at home, the father took the promise from the son never to become an astronaut. Because it is endless anguish. When he is in the space, he’s homesick strongly missing his son and wife. And when he is with them, he’s missing the stars same strongly.
It leaves a hard and bitter aftertaste. Got abstracted, have to say.
But it caused an occurence of the picture in the upper part of Wanderings.
Both pictures are combined by their centered compositions, the attention is focused on the bigger figure, as if it were the strongest memory, then the figures are gradually getting smaller and spreading from the center.
The pictures have similar background and are placed in the space in similar way. There are small pieces of polished glass used on both of them and framed with white colour. The central memories are painted on three layers of glass to make an accent on the depth of the picture and emphasize the wish to grab the attention to the center.
The first Picture Home (which I intended to make more static) has got the equal proportions of the picture, and some minor contrast in sizes, and the second picture, on the contrary, was intended as a dynamic one, having bigger difference in sizes and shapes of various images and memories.
In the lower left corner of the second picture (Wanderings) there’s an olive tree. It was pictured as an apple tree, not a realistic to underline the feeling called being homesick, deeply missing your home.
At the left side of the picture Home, there’s a midseason, when the trees are without leaves, and the mountains could be seen through their naked branches as a symbol of wanderings.
The creation of the diptych represents a permanent conflict between the strong desire for Wanderings and wish to come back Home. It is an attempt to make up my mind to the thought that any picture of the diptych is sad and uncompleted without another.
The diptych`s idea occurred years ago, but it was realized only during the lock–down time, and became an actual the way as ii could be never before.
By the way, this year we got endless apples in the garden 😉