Merlin Monroe Drawing

My life is a continuous art project titled 'Interaction'—a journey of returning to roots and discovering inner freedom. I was born in Ukraine, but as a person of Czech descent, my move to the Czech Republic in 2016 was more than a relocation; it was a return to the land of my ancestors. This 'starting from a clean slate' in my ancestral homeland has become a powerful catalyst for my creative evolution. For 30 years, my path was deeply rooted in Christian asceticism and the art of iconography. Having founded an icon-painting school, I mastered the discipline of 'passionless' painting, where the artist’s ego dissolves into sacred rhythms. However, this profound experience eventually led me to a breakthrough—from the constraints of religious dogma into the 'Open Space' of intuitive art. Today, my work is a synthesis of that sacred discipline and a new, liberated intuition. I explore the Icon Rhythms in everything: the growth of a bamboo stalk, the curves of the human body, and the pulse of social shifts. I believe that a painting can be a prophecy—a visualization of internal states or upcoming global cataclysms. Whether I am working with egg tempera, silk painting, or modern acrylics, I aim to capture the moment of interaction—where thought touches the canvas and the soul reconnects with its origins and the Infinite.