I paint what I call dreamscapes — сонкраї — places seen in a dream and longed for on waking. They first appeared in my work during a period of severe depression, when painting became a way out: I wanted to escape somewhere, so I escaped into the worlds I dreamed.
Each dreamscape is built in layers of mixed media — paint, textile, texture — until it holds its own atmosphere and depth, with no fixed horizon, where sky, water, and earth flow into one another the way they do in memory.
A dreamscape is love without possession: a place you cannot own, dig up, or carry home — only return to. I don’t try to depict a real landscape so much as the feeling of one: half-remembered, quietly familiar, and impossible to reach except in sleep. I live and work in Kyiv, where longing for a place you cannot return to is not only a dream but a daily reality.
What began as my own escape has become something I want to give to others. I paint these worlds so that someone else — tired or hurting — might step inside and rest there for a while.
My dreams, given away as a place to escape to.