Merite Watercolour

Hello and welcome to my page! I am Maria Mykytiuk - Merite Watercolour, born in 1982 in Kyiv, Ukraine, and had been living there until the war broke in spring 2022. I have evacutated to Manchester, UK and have been staying here since April 2022.

Watercolour is my favourite media, since I love the water itself and enjoy its spontaneity. In working process, I consider it an equal partnership between myself, the water, the paper and the paint, and I like to watch how the image is born out of it.

When I have a choice, I prefer plein airs to a studio work. Nature is my key source of life power, and my main inspiration, and I can't help painting it as if trying to learn its deepest secrets. With a background in dance, I have transferred the love to movement to my artworks as well.The play of light and shadow, the movement of wind and the feeling of space in a landscape in front of you all create a space-movement pattern in my imagination which I eager to capture and convey in watercolour.

Andrew Wyeth, John Yardley and Kanta Harusaki are the first among the many watercolourists I adore, and Victoria Semykina is the very first among modern book illustrators who give me a thrill because of her vivid imagination.

2000-2006 - MD in Social Science, the National University of " Kyiv - Mohyla Academy".

I do not have an official arts education, although I have been painting since 6 years old and taking private courses and classes from Ukrainian artists of different genres and illustrators, such as Mykola Grokh, Ihor Yurchenko, Yaryna Saenko, Maksym Mazur, Leonora Yakimaschenko, Tetiana Kozhaeva and Valeriy Kozub.

International:
2017 - The World of Watercolour, 2017 - International watercolour exhibition dedicated to the 26th anniversary of Ukraine's Independence day - Bratislava, Slovakia

2018 - MiniCastra 2018, 2nd International small format watercolour festival - Ajdovscina, Slovenia

2018 - MiniWatercolour Kyiv 2018, 1nd International festival of the watercolour miniature - Kyiv, Ukraine

2018 - Sea Aquarelle Odesa 2020, 2d all-Ukrainian and international exhibition - Odesa, Ukraine

2019 - Tirana International Self-portrait biennale - Tirana, Albania

2019 - MiniWatercolour Kyiv 2019, 2nd International festival of the watercolour miniature - Kyiv, Ukraine

2020 - Sea Aquarelle Odesa 2020, 3d all-Ukrainian and international exhibition - Odesa, Ukraine

All-Ukrainian and local:
2017 - All-Ukrainian Christmas exhibition at the National Artist Union of Ukraine - Kyiv, Ukraine

2018 - Sea Aquarelle Odesa 2020, 2d all-Ukrainian and international exhibition - Odesa, Ukraine

2018 - A Watercolour album 2020, the 2nd all-Ukrainian watercolour exhibition - Kyiv, Ukraine

2019 - Art Parralels 2019, a group exhibition and contest of graphic arts – Kyiv, Ukraine

2019 - Dni-Pro, a group watercolour exhibition - Cherkasy,...