My life rather reminds me of a tangled tangle of threads or Brownian motion

=sixteen works=

=six months=

=five countries=

=22 thousand kilometers of travel=…

    I started making these works in one of the National Parks of Poland, continued in the middle of the mountains of Canada, and finished them in my homeland. In a half-abandoned house, in the basement… and never at home. Either home is the whole planet, or you don’t have one. Despite all the horrors that happen at home, despite all the imperfections, your heart is here. Your relatives are here, your family and roots are here. Here you feel who you are and the land nourishes you….

    …and there, in a foreign land, I felt the need to write my first work. And it was not about the war. It was about a talisman – my grandfather’s embroidered tie. My grandfather was from the village of Marianivka, Hukiv district, Khmelnytskyi region. It was quite old and restored. It was the only one and expensive as a family heirloom, and it remained in Ukraine. In memory of the tie, I decided to write a paper. At that time, the cotton harvest had just begun in the occupied territories, and sunflowers were blooming in the field. That’s how my first watercolor embroidery appeared – a triptych that intertwines the past, present, and future flowering of sunny Ukraine.

It was the embroidered shirt, which is based on a square combination, and nowadays – the Ukrainian pixel – that formed the basis of future works. These are images that stem from stories about my mother’s childhood, memories of Ukrainian history, and current events that have unfolded on our territory, and feelings for the Motherland.

    Is it possible to comprehend all of this as if it were really happening? That is why these pixels appear, witnesses to the unnaturalness of events.

Filters that consciousness imposes to preserve sanity. The filters of our time…

Olena Rubliova, artist

REFERENCES

    Olena Rubliova is a contemporary Ukrainian artist, watercolorist.

She was born in Horlivka, Donetsk region, in 1987. Since childhood, she has been fascinated by the idea of saving the world from environmental disaster, but eventually realized that only beauty can save the world. Her childhood was creative, she painted and sculpted a lot.

    In 2009, she graduated from Donetsk National University. In 2008-2010, she studied art at the private studio of fine arts of I. V. Tyunin. In 2010, she left Horlivka for Kyiv, where she studied art (M. M. Hrokh School at the National Union of Artists of Ukraine), worked and created for 12 years.

   While living in Kyiv, Olena participated in many art projects and exhibitions, international festivals and plein airs. She is a member of the cultural and artistic project “Breath of Watercolor” and the creative association “Five”.

She has experience as an artist at the Center for Culture and Arts of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, a designer at the Museum of the Historical Center of Kyiv, and a head of a fine arts studio, where she gained skills in scenic design, set design, design of exhibition space, pedagogy, and organization of the educational process for children.

    All this time Olena was simultaneously engaged in her own artistic practice. She also teaches fine arts at an art studio for children in Kyiv.

 She is passionate about and works only with watercolors. It is a complex technique with endless possibilities for expression. It is as free as Ukraine, meditative, filled with contradictions that occur when paint spilled on wet paper needs to be controlled. It’s really impossible to conquer it, but once you master this technique, you’ll never betray watercolor again!

    Due to the war, Olena had to change her place of residence three times. Her works also traveled with her. Now the artist lives and works in Khmelnytskyi.

Olena Rubleva’s works are kept in private collections in Ukraine, the United States of America, Canada, Poland, Belgium, Spain, Slovenia, France, and others.

Selected exhibitions:

December, 2022 – personal exhibition “Sila natury”, Bebrza National Park, Osowiec, Poland

May, 2022 – international festival “FabrianoinAquarello”, Italy, Fabriano

April, 2022 – personal exhibition, “Centrum Kultury”, Monki, Poland

September 2021 – international watercolor festival “Urbino In Aquarello”, Urbino, Italy

August 2021 – offline exhibition of watercolors IWS Slovenia, Castra 2021, Lokarjeva gallery, Adjovnica, Slovenia

June 2021 – International exhibition of landscape “A. I. Kuindzhi Memorial”, Mariupol, Ukraine

January 2021 – International online exhibition IWS “New Art”, Hong Kong (Short List)

September 2020 – International exhibition of botanical illustration, Ukraine, Kyiv (nomination for composition and technique)

June 2020 – Ukrainian exhibition “Breath of Watercolor”, Ukraine, Boryspil

February 2020 – group exhibition of the artistic community “Five”, graphics and fine arts, Ukraine, Kyiv

July 2019 – International festival of mini-watercolors in Ukraine, Kyiv