"Turtle" Painting

Olena Rublova is a contemporary Ukrainian artist working primarily in watercolor. Her paintings explore the fragile relationship between memory, nature, and the idea of home. Drawing on her education in biology and ecology, she creates carefully constructed visual narratives where ordinary natural objects become symbols of resilience, transformation, and cultural memory.

"I did not become an artist instead of becoming an ecologist. I became an artist because I wanted to protect the same world.

I grew up in Horlivka, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region—a place where extraordinary biodiversity existed alongside heavy industry, mining, and chemical plants. As a child, I witnessed both the beauty of nature and its gradual transformation by human activity. I chose to study biology and ecology believing that science could help protect the fragile balance between people and the environment.

Over time, I realized that facts alone rarely change the way people feel. Art can.

Today my paintings explore the fragile relationships between nature, memory, home, and cultural identity. I work primarily in watercolor because no other medium reflects these ideas so truthfully. Watercolor is both controlled and unpredictable; it demands patience while embracing accident. Its transparency reminds me that beauty and vulnerability can exist simultaneously.

Many of my works begin long before the painting itself. I spend days collecting natural objects, building symbolic still lifes, searching for the right light, or returning to places that carry personal or collective memory. Every element becomes part of a visual language through which ordinary things—a shell, a butterfly, a branch, water, a bird—speak about transformation, loss, resilience, and hope.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has made these questions even more urgent. My artistic practice has expanded beyond the studio into participatory projects that preserve memory, strengthen communities, and reflect on what it means to belong to a place under threat.

Whether I paint landscapes, symbolic still lifes, or contemporary projects, I continue to pursue the same purpose that first led me to ecology: to encourage people to look more carefully, to value what is fragile, and to protect what cannot be replaced."


The works of Olena Rublova are included in private collections and museus in Ukraine, UnitedStates of America, Canada, Poland, Belgium, Spain, Slovenia, and France, amongst others.


My e-mail is