№17 Painting

Oleksandr Shevchuk, the Ukrainian artist, paints portraits in the technique of oil painting. The creative approach of the artist can be described as a personal experience of synthesizing reinterpretation of modern art practices with fundamental achievements of realism in the aesthetics of European fine art. The exposition reflects the author's transformation of the latest aspects of the development of a fairly traditional genre, which is a portrait. Despite the strict drawing requirements for form inherent in this thematic area, the color remains the dominant feature of Oleksandr Shevchuk's works – the main carrier of psychologism and imaginative atmosphere in painting. In the context of coloristic findings, both the composition and the kinetics of textures, which is diverse in picturesqueness, find an extraordinary and unique manifestation in the artist's works. The large scale of the format, the framing findings of the composition clearly determine the aesthetic idea of cosmogenic in human nature, where the phenomenon of a pictorial medium leads the viewer to perceive reality through a different vector of worldview. The portrait is one of the most significant and complex types of fine art. The centuries-old history of this genre has developed a wide range of types and trends for humanity, and the traditions and schools have been formed over the centuries. But every artist who chooses a portrait as his task is faced with the phenomenon of time and timelessness, obviousness and incomprehensibility, physical and spiritual, which is forever embodied in the image of a person. Oleksandr Shevchuk, the master of portrait paintings, is from Ladyzhyn city. He got an art education at Dnipropetrovsk art vocational school, teacher L. A. Antoniuk, 1995-2000, and at Kyiv Academy of Arts and Architecture at the Faculty of easel painting, Professor M. Ye. Huida, 2000-2007. From 2004, he began working with London Art Gallery. Oleksandr Shevchuk's works have been successfully exhibited at world-famous art auctions in Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom such as Christie's, Chelsea, and others. His participation in the vernissages of France was quite fruitful. In his artistic practice, the artist himself does not prefer any of the existing art movements or trends, entrusting this aspect to be determined by the specialists. Some art experts see in the portraits of Oleksandr Shevchuk a correspondence to the art movement known as "abstract figurative".