Original artwork description:

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

"Shelter Me" is an evocative portrayal of the human need for protection and emotional safety. The central figure, with her eyes closed in a serene, almost meditative state, seeks solace in an embrace with a mythical creature. This juxtaposition symbolizes the search for a haven that is both earthly and otherworldly, a place where one can be shielded from the tumult of the outside world.

The use of a warm, fiery palette conveys a sense of passion and urgency, while the cooler tones in the background provide a calming counterbalance, suggesting a complex emotional landscape. The expressive brushstrokes and the blending of abstract and figurative elements create a dream-like quality, inviting the viewer to contemplate the sanctuaries we construct in our minds and hearts.

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

Tags: