«The Story of One Family» Ukrainian Artist, MARYNA OMELCHENKO Exhibition Open Tuesday to Saturday 10-4pm – Cafe open at these times

Preview evening and meet the Artist – 6.30 -8pm 

When the war started, I was in my final year at the Academy of Arts, preparing to write my thesis. I planned to create illustrations for my poems about love, beauty, and life. I wanted to paint them in a mixed technique, using bright watercolor and acrylic colors.

But the war changed all my plans. I couldn’t think about anything else but war.

I created my thesis in the west of Ukraine, where my family: My husband, my daughter, and our cat fled on the first day of the war.

I was creating art works with the materials I could find because the shops were not working, logistics were disrupted, it was difficult even to buy food, let alone paints and paper. This is a series of works consisting of 5 paintings, illustrations for my poems about faith in victory, about the pain we all felt, about hope for a better future.Creativity was my way of surviving and keeping my sanity during those difficult times.

I used few colors because war has no bright colors. Everything is black, white, gray, and the color of blood. I used the aquatint technique when you don’t know how the paint will flow. This symbolizes that none of us (Ukrainians) still knows how and where our life will turn out, now we cannot make long-term plans.

I used crumpled paper for the collage, which symbolizes the things we hastily collected because runing from the war, we had to pack our whole life into one suitcase.

I used newspapers, symbolizing media resources, because the whole world started talking about Ukraine.

At the bottom of every art work, you can see the text. These are the words of my poems. Handwritten letters on the torn piece of paper symbolize the lives of soldiers at the front, where there is no internet or communication. They can write words of love to their families on paper, in the breaks between the terrible reality.

I want to describe each artwork shortly.

The first one is called “Lullaby.” It’s about thousands of Ukrainian women who were left alone with their children because their husbands went to defend the country

Come along and enjoy these amazing paintings with a lovely cake and cup of tea/coffee.