My website is moving to a new home – letaart.com!
Along the regular school, I went to City Art School in Ukraine where I grew up (Now everyone knows what Ukraine is!) It was a product of the Soviet era: almost free, 3-4 days a week after school. We had drawing, painting, sculpture, art history lessons. Those many quiet hours were the best, being absorbed into creating a new world on paper.
By the time I moved to California, I had chosen computer science as my major. Besides thinking it’s a sensible thing to do, I believed that one should have inspiration to draw and paint, but writing code and solving math problems can be done any time.
It took me years to realize that creative work, as actually every work, should be a practice. Inspiration is the result of work and not the other way around. I went as far as a Ph.D. program in computer science at Stanford to realize that I walk on the wrong path.
Finding the right one took time, my love affair with paints and ink on the backburner. But I finally identified the nagging itch and enrolled in an evening painting course. I thought I was just taking time for myself to recharge.. It’s like pouring a glass of water and finding an ocean inside.
Paint is the substance of gods. It has a mind of its own and one needs to respect that. I paint and learn with every piece I make. I use my own photographs as a source material for my paintings, as well as imagination, memories and feelings. I love walking in forests and walking in the streets of old cities. In my art I explore the idea of a Path.
PATH
The main theme I explore in my art is paths, both physical and metaphorical. They represent an idea of being present for your life. It originates in growing up an introvert and later being an immigrant, an outsider. Natural tendency to introspection and required time alone allows me to slow down and explore my feelings. Being an artist, I learned to see.
Our culture is universally focused on goals and people rush through their lives forgetting that the ultimate goal, the end, is the cemetery. We are either regretting the past or planning (anticipating / dreading) the future, forgetting to notice the right now, the fleeting moment. We are both eagerly distracted with abundant entertainment and too preoccupied with the end in mind missing to hug our kid (is the homework done?), kiss our partner (are the errands finished?), or enjoy the cup of tea in the early morning, looking out at sun rays bathing the windows in the golden pink light (is that phone notification for an important work email?).
I would like to invite you to walk in the summer barefoot along some meandering forest path. Notice the colors of the sky, how light falls to the forest floor cascading through the leaves. The earth under foot is soft and breathing and every step you take matters just as much as where this path leads.
EXHIBITIONS
- EBOS. June 2020. Online and some artists will show in November in person. eastbayopenstudios.com/
- Fine Art in the Park, Los Altos Rotary’s annual juried art show, May 2020. Held online at rotaryartshow.com/.
- Saratoga Rotary Art show, juried art fair, May 2020. Cancelled. saratogarotaryartshow.org/
- Where Art and Nature Meet. Bankhead Theater Gallery. In Yellowstone and Ocean Fire accepted. September and October 2019.
- EBOS. June 2019.
- Luminous art show, California Watercolor Association, at the Danville Village Theater Gallery. Fall Brook painting is accepted. May and June 2019.
- California exhibition at Los Altos Public Library. Going Home is accepted as part of Silicon Valley Open Studios preview. April 2019.
- Expressions Tracy Art League Exhibit. Tracy. March 2019.
Three watercolor paintings Fog, Practice, and Santa Fe. Musician. are accepted. - PAL Wall solo show at Firehouse Art Center, Pleasanton. January 2019.
- Pleasanton Art League’s 10th Annual Fall Members’ Exhibit at the Firehouse. Pleasanton. November 2018.
- EBOS. June 2018.
- Museum On Main Imagination Expressed PAL Spring 2018.
- SVOS. May 2017.
- UArt Open juried exhibition August 2013. In the Light accepted and received an award.
