Back in 2014, I did a series of paintings reflecting on the cities of Ukraine. I called it “Unity,” the wishful thinking motif that many Ukrainians shared when Russia invaded the eastern Ukrainian area of Donbas and took Crimea. These paintings were filled with mourning, longing, and hope. And memories of the Ukraine I had left 11 years earlier. I wasn’t able to revisit it until 2017.
A lot of the paintings look moody and obscure, and some even suggest fires, smoke, and loss. Or am I imagining it, looking back at what I created 9 years later, through the angry eyes of a Ukrainian watching my country being wiped off the face of the Earth by the terrorist state of Russia?
Unity - Crimea
Whatever it is, these paintings haunt me now. Here is Kharkiv, somber and tall. Dnipro, with a red open wound, Lviv, aged and tired of caring for those sheltering in its beautiful architecture. Kyiv, the Golden Gate still miraculously intact.
Unity - Dnipro
The art technique I came up with and used on this series also feels non-accidental. I would first cover the panel (prepared with a special paper) with conte crayon marks, effectively ending the blank page paralysis. Then came the thick layer of intense, juicy watercolor. After it dried (which took a while, since the Yupo paper is essentially plastic), I began the archeological process of uncovering the silhouette of my Ukrainian cities. Parts of the scenes got scraped away to reveal layers of ghostly shapes and atmospheric moodiness. Others have the preserved intensity of the original layer of paint. And some I reworked over and over, removing all of it and adding it back, until the translucent strata spoke of my history the way I wanted it to.
Unity - Lviv
I haven’t been to all of of these places. Some of the reference images came from my friends and family, some from historic postcards, some from internet strangers. And yet, all of them felt…native to me. The architecture, from the cold Soviet neoclassicism to copper-roofed Ukrainian Baroque, is all mine. It is the architecture of these cities that inspired me to become an artist, and then a passionate architect.
Unity - Khotyn
And every time a Russian missile destroys a Ukrainian building, a part of my heart breaks.