"Sakura Breathing" Painting

I have been painting since before I can remember. My earliest memory is from around age four — filling sheet after sheet, trying to draw a single line just right. A rabbit, made with felt-tip markers. My mother kept that drawing in the cabinet for years. At seven, I joined art school, full of excitement. But soon the joy faded in — cubes, academic construction, endless cross-hatching. I didn't understand why painting had to be so rigid. That tension followed me through failed entrance exams, a year of disciplined academic study, and finally, a place at the Pedagogical University of South Ukraine. By my fourth year, I had mastered the rules so well my paintings had become lifeless. Then a new teacher arrived — Valentyn Filipenko — and everything changed. He said: compositions should be bold, colours should be alive, work should breathe. It felt like someone had finally opened a window in a room sealed for four years. After university I taught at an art school, only to find myself caught in the same academic loop I had escaped. So I kept searching — watercolour, oil, acrylic — until I stopped choosing between them. Now I mix everything. A quiet memory of academic training might draw me toward a clean, tender watercolour wash; a few sessions later, all my materials are on the table and I am lost in colour, texture, layering. I especially love building textured surfaces and then scratching back through them — revealing what lies beneath. Since moving to Ireland, my palette has absorbed the green light of Limerick alongside the warmth of Ukrainian summers. I paint for the feeling — not the category. Each work is an act of searching for that one line, the one that finally feels right.