Artworks by Olena Romashkina

I am a Ukrainian contemporary artist, and my work grows from emotion, movement, memory and the unexpected stories that appear while I paint. I rarely begin with a finished image in my mind. I prefer to let a painting develop intuitively, responding to colour, rhythm, music and the shapes that unexpectedly emerge on the surface. Sometimes a tiny detail becomes the beginning of an entire visual story. Line is especially important to me. Over time, it has become a kind of visual handwriting — a way of exploring movement, light, shadow and emotion. Flowers, animals, people and ordinary objects often appear in my work, but they are usually only starting points for something less literal: a memory, a feeling, or an imagined world. One of my earliest artistic memories is connected with my grandmother. She never considered herself someone who could draw, but one day, when I was a child, I watched her create a simple figure from circles and lines. For some reason, that small moment fascinated me. I think something began there that stayed with me and eventually became part of my own artistic language. I studied at the Ukrainian Academy of Printing and have exhibited my work in Ukraine, Germany and Slovenia. Today, my artworks can be found in private collections in different countries around the world. For me, painting is not about illustrating an idea I already know. It is about discovering something while I work — allowing one line to lead to another until an image, a character or an entire little world begins to exist.