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A play of colors and light in Olha Petrova’s paintings

22 July, 00:00
SELF-PORTRAIT WITH A CLOWN

It is simply amazing how the indefatigable artist Olha Petrova always finds the time to do everything. The paintings, graphics, installation art, and numerous solo exhibitions and art projects that she curates are only one side of the rich creative life of this art historian, professor, and academician. Petrova has nurtured several generations of culturologists at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

But her amazing ability to manage her time is not a puzzle to her - she simply works - a lot. Every day she offers the world a feast of life and colors.

Her studio is filled with works that are bursting with life, emotions, and impressions: a flower in bloom in the window of a rural cottage, Crimean vineyards running down a mountain slope, reflections in front of a Japanese temple, the rioting sea on the Turkish seacoast, severe British restraint, French hospitality, and ancient Basque monasteries.

Petrova’s works are owned by museums in Ukraine, Austria, India, the UK, France, Israel, Georgia, and Japan, and are found in private collections all over the world.

“Petrova is under the spell of color with which she is conducting a dialogue,” explained the well-known art historian Ihor Dychenko. “In the last few years the energy that emanates from her canvases equals the power of the flooded rivers of the Carpathian Mountains. The artist’s element is the broad expanse. Like the mythological bird Syryn, she may call up dreams or awaken those who slumber. She herself seems to be on the verge of turning into a fish or a bird. The optimistic expressionism of Petrova’s style is connected to the experience of many generations of painters and her love of ecstatic colors. The faint and half-ruined light of childhood does not see that dreams and reality usually encounter each other in a fairytale.”

Bottega, the new gallery on Mykhailivska Street in Kyiv, is holding an exhibit of Petrova’s works entitled “Red- Blue-Yellow.” The works displayed in the three small but cozy rooms reflect the artist’s idea of color, the beauty of her emotional universe, and her philosophical reflections in color. The curators have clearly understood the philosophy behind the artist’s color scheme, and have presented the artist’s brilliant paintings in an organic fashion.

There were none of the traditional speeches at the vernissage that was attended by many of the artist’s famous colleagues and art experts, who would have gladly said a few words of greeting. But the gallery owners’ credo is to help establish a direct link between the spectators and the works of art. Art lovers now have an opportunity to view Petrova’s wonderful world of color and light not only from their personal viewpoints but also under the influence of the artist’s credo: “The physical spectrum of colors determines the ideal according to the principles that are close to the Byzantine color scheme, in which color embodies God in the reflection of light. Nonfigurative art is a path to this kind of ‘spiritual vision.’”

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