"Red Tea Roses" Painting

I was born in Kyiv in 1966, and art entered my life before I could fully understand it.
As a small child, I found myself in the home of my relative Grigory Svetlitsky — the first People's Artist of Ukraine. His paintings covered the walls, filled the rooms, breathed. Something settled in me then that has never left. I have not put down a brush since the age of five.
Over the decades my practice has grown across several directions: impressionist painting, abstraction, watercolour, portraiture. I am drawn to flowers, to light, to the moment just before a scene becomes ordinary. Oil and pastel remain my most trusted materials — direct, honest, alive under the knife and brush.
In 2018 a new chapter opened. I began painting icons in the Byzantine tradition for the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, one of the most sacred sites in Ukraine, and have since collaborated with monasteries and churches throughout the country. This work has asked more of me than anything else — in patience, in silence, in precision — and it has given back in equal measure.
My paintings are shown in galleries across Ukraine and held in private collections in many countries.
I paint because I cannot imagine doing otherwise.