On November 9, at 16:00, the Khmelnytsky Regional Art Museum will host the opening of the exhibition of paintings “BAKHMUT. WE WILL NOT GIVE IT AWAY!” by contemporary Ukrainian artist Kateryna Rudenko (Bakhmut). She was born in Norilsk in 1989. At the age of 5, she moved with her family to Artemivsk (now Bakhmut), Donetsk region. Art was a hereditary tradition in the family. Her grandmother, working as a retoucher in a photo studio, was an amateur woodcutter and decorated the walls with traditional folk drawings. Her cousin is an architect by profession, and is also engaged in fashion design.

Kateryna says she has been painting all her life. During her school years, she attended an art class at the city’s House of Children and Youth, and participated in regional children’s art competitions. Later, she took painting lessons in the private studio of H. Datoian. In 2014, she graduated from the Luhansk State Academy of Culture and Arts (Faculty of Fine Arts, specialty “Easel Painting”). Her teachers were Honored Artists of Ukraine V. Kozlov and O. Bezuhlyi. Her first personal exhibition was held in Luhansk in 2012. While living in Bakhmut, in 2015-2020, she participated in the annual exhibitions dedicated to the City Day “Bakhmut Vernissage” in the city museum of local lore. She worked as the head of the village library in Klynove village, Bakhmut district, and created the art club “Palette” for all ages who want to engage in fine arts.

At the same time, Kateryna continued to create her own artistic works. Her works include urban and rural landscapes, portraits, still lifes, and genre compositions. The artist works mainly with oil paints, and has also tried her hand at graphics. Since the beginning of the full-scale war, Kateryna has been forced to change her place of residence three times. In the summer of 2022, she moved with her family from Klynove, which soon came under occupation, to Bakhmut, and then to Petrykivka, Dnipro region, where she studied Petrykivka painting. Now the artist and her children are in Norway. She organized a painting class in a camp for refugees from Ukraine. Kateryna Rudenko’s works are kept in the Bakhmut Museum of Local Lore and the city library, as well as in private collections in Ukraine and the United States.

The artist works in different genres. “Ukrainian Still Life” is painted in an impressionistic manner with pure bright colors. The work on historical themes “Roksolana’s Dream” in the spirit of symbolism recreates the memory of the captive about the lost homeland. “Freedom Square” is a winter landscape of the center of Bakhmut in night lighting, also made in an impressionistic manner. The works of the last year: diptychs “We will not give it away!” and “Close your eyes”. They are based on the contrast between the images of the former peaceful city and the modern Bakhmut, which for a year stood as an unbreakable fortress against the enemy invasion, and now is occupied and destroyed by Russian aggression. The exhibition “BAKHMUT. WE WILL NOT GIVE IT AWAY!” was shown at the Ukrinform press center in Kyiv (June 2023) and on Bakhmut City Day at the 79 Corner art space in Kharkiv (September 2023).