“In search of for gotten colors”

Halyna Inhula, 26, has been a professional painter for no more than three years. She completed Kyiv’s Special School No. 18 for hearing-impaired children and was then trained as a Web designer. She has worked as a confectioner, toy painter, and Web designer, and has studied wood painting and carving. For the past several years Inhula has been attending the studio of the well-known Kyiv artist Kostiantyn Kosarevsky.

Now about 90 pictures by the young artist can be found in private collections and offices in Kyiv. Her first unexpected success was triggered by a series of fantasy works, which Halyna called “Planet Inhula.” These paintings depict a bizarre world populated by beings of outlandish geometrical forms, exotic flowers, and strangely bright colors. Halyna is also successfully working in the realistic manner.

Halyna’s works have been exhibited at six solo shows and one group show held at the Kyiv Polytechnic Museum, City Hall (to mark the 1,300th anniversary of Korosten), the Kyiv Mohyla Academy Gallery, the Holiday Inn architectural library, the Kyiv Architecture Committee hall, and even in France (last November and last May at the Cascade art cafe in Paris’s 19th arrondissement).

Halyna’s exhibits have attracted the interest of both spectators and art critics. The current exhibit, called “In Search of Forgotten Colors,” at the National League of Writers is her seventh. Halyna experiments boldly with color, rightly considering that we, adults, unlike children, often forget how radiant our world is. According to Inhula, showing people the true brilliance of the world is one of her principal missions.

Simultaneously with this exhibit on 2 Bankova St., Inhula is presenting her works at a group show at the cultural center of the Society for the Deaf. Called “My Kyiv,” it is dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the Kyiv Union of Hearing-Impaired Artists. Concurrently, Inhula’s paintings will be shown again in Paris. Halyna was invited to exhibit her works in Paris in November 2006. But the exhibit was cancelled because almost half of her works were lost during the flight and were only found in December (Halyna sued the air carrier and the airport).