Original artwork description:

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

"I Have the Horse. Am I a Knight?" weaves a narrative of self-inquiry and identity. The central figure, a woman astride a majestic horse, is painted with warm, earthy hues of terra cotta and burnt sienna that bring forth her connection to nature and the animal. Her pose and closed eyes suggest a meditative state, contemplating her power and place in a historical tapestry often dominated by knights and warriors.

The artist's brushwork is expressive and deliberate, with bold strokes that give texture and movement to the composition. The contrast between the fluid lines of the woman's form and the horse's muscular build is highlighted by a vibrant palette of reds and oranges, symbolizing passion, energy, and strength.

Background trees rise like silent witnesses, painted in elongated strokes of green that hint at growth and life, standing in contrast to the soft, dreamy quality of the ground. This painting is a dialogue with history and gender, asking the viewer to consider the roles we accept and the personas we embody. It is a modern tale of transformation and possibility, asking, "If I possess the means, do I not possess the right to be?"

Inner Garden Series. Daria explores the possibility of self-identification of a person from fragments of cultures and concepts, her works actualize the thirst for the integrity of the individual in the ever-changing cycle of ideas and meanings. The artist asks about the possibility of being an integral person in the metamodern era, characterized by oscillation between polar concepts and rethinking of fundamental ideas of the past. Her work is an inner response to the question of what integrality is and whether there is a need to strive for certain ideals.

Her work is also an external response to the totalitarian concepts that still exist in society. Concepts that are imposed from above require a false integrity, namely a certain ideology, and persecute everything that goes beyond these concepts. Born at the crossroads of Ukrainian and Russian cultures during the collapse of the Soviet Union, Daria manifests the norm of fragmentation as the norm, replacing the demands of integrity with the idea of accepting otherness as unconditional beauty. Her characters build their own world in which culture has not become a dictatorship - the world that Daria considers her home.

Here is what Daria herself says about her works

I draw hybrid creatures and symbols of an anthropomorphic world because I feel like a hybrid of cultures and identities. I desire wholeness, I love to see it in others, but I feel fragmented in myself. My paintings are my way of coming to terms with my own fragmented identity, and my way of showing that the beautiful does not always have to fit into an already existing framework.

Materials used:

Oil

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