The Masquerade Painting

I express my thoughts and feelings through allegories. Roads, bikes, sails, birds and other objects in my paintings have symbolic meaning. Road can represent life journey. Wind associated with anxiety and awaiting changes. Broken umbrella is telling a story of broken heart. Sailing is following or fighting for your dream. I like discovering new objects with “meaning” to use in my works, like a poet uses allegories. Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, I became infected with the drawing virus at a very early age when I discovered on my parents’ bookshelf a book of caricatures by Herluf Bidstrup, famous Danish artist/caricaturist. So my early experimentation with art was in drawing caricatures of my classmates, teachers and other locals. I studied painting at the Kyiv Art School and in 1987 graduated from the Kyiv State Institute of Arts with a degree in architecture. After graduation I worked as an architect and later changed my career into graphic design. I return to my passion, painting, many years later, when in 2000 I immigrated with my family to New Zealand. I began experimenting with different mediums and techniques to move away from the representational approach, participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions run in Wellington - WAG (Wellington Artist Group), Watercolour NZ, Academy of Fine Arts, South Coast Gallery and Portraiture Award exhibitions. The NZ Art Show (Wellington) is my favorite event. I have participated in the show as a Single Artist Wall exhibitor every year since it started in 2004. Most of my works are based on first impression sketches and caricatures. I let them travel straight from my sketchbook onto a canvas with very little changes and corrections. In regards to colour - I should confess to a great love of green in all its shades. However there was a certain shift in my colour palette after moving to Australia in 2010. My works can also be viewed on my website and on the Bluethumb, Australian online gallery .