In this piece I was hoping to explore the feelings I have about my experiences with the Ukrainian revolution. This event has brought both, freedom and a huge breach between friends, relatives and families. Although all share one culture and history that the Ukrainian national shirt represents, some have radically different views that ruptured the country and created conflicts and costed many their own lives. I tried to play with the composition and colour scheme of the painting to represent it. The picture is warm coloured, implying a space of what is supposed to be home, warm, cozy, welcoming. But the composition is cold. Figure isn't the centre of attention, faces are unimportant, for they represent not a single person, but a portion of the nation. They are positioned facing away from each other, only a cold shadow connecting them. Their bodies aren't full. Cut of at the waist they represent being just pawns on someone's political chess board. Their postures are sunken, exhausted. All they want is freedom, peace, unification … same goals under different definitions.
This piece was the first of the 8 pieces I made this term for VISA 230 class. Over the course of the entire class, as well as during working on this painting specifically, I not only met a lot of challenges, but also improved my skills significantly.
My biggest challenge perhaps was time. Prior to this class I was required to make 12 works a year. In these 4 months however, I was supposed to produce 16 (8 big pieces & 8 sketch paintings 9"x12"). Although it was hard at first, I do believe that it helped me organize my schedule and once again fall in love with painting even more because I really learned to problem solve faster and be more confident in my decisions concerning my work.
One of the problems I solved actually has become an achievement I am proud of the most now. Because of the prices of paints in Canada being much higher than back home, and paints not being provided at university as it was in my high school, I learned how to work only with 3 basic RGB colours and white, mixing my whole colour scheme for all of my 16 pieces from scratch.