Ola Rondiak’s paintings stem from her family’s experiences living in Ukraine during the historical events of WWII, Stalin’s Iron Curtain, the Orange Revolution in 2004 and the Revolution of Dignity in 2014. These events shaped Ola Rondiak’s world view. Emotional experiences surface in her artworks as her own history intertwines with Ukrainian history and tradition, preparing the viewer with a rare "contemporary art with a historical conscious."  As stated by Kathrine Page (Delaware Contemporary Museum), Rondiak “harvests a bold new, deeply personal prototype emblematic of feminine tenacity stitched in truth through the thread of her own story. Rondiak’s creativity cuts the cloth of a new absolute beauty with a redemptive quality that clearly understands the important healing role of art and the psyche for future generations.” The female image looms large, and for Ola Rondiak, the female portrait underpins the terrain for truth and dignity on her canvases and installations. "Her large ultra-flat paintings derived from Byzantine medieval mural painting offer a local shared symbology imbued with historical reference, made contemporary by the use of Post-Modernist techniques." (Juan Puntes, Whitebox, NYC)

Her contemporary "Motanka" sculptures, inspired by ancient Ukrainian rag dolls, serve as a talisman for good health, fortune, and healing. Rondiak's Neo-Pop sculptures, made from her children's clothing covered with plaster of paris and old signs or homework papers, are a testament to better times, a notion of passing time and morphing histories.

Rondiak earned her BS degree at Hunter College and later her M.Ed when she worked as a psychotherapist. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions internationally, most recently at the John William Gallery in Wilmington, Delaware and the Vozianov Studio in Kyiv, Ukraine. Prior solo exhibits include the Maidan Museum and RA Gallery in Kyiv, Ukraine, The Shevchenko National Museum and The National Museum of Decorative Art in Kaniv, Ukraine, the Honchar Museum in Kyiv, US Embassy in Kyiv and Tri--Mission Art Gallery in the American Embassy in Rome, Italy, Dzyga Gallery in Lviv, Ukraine, The Ukrainian Institute of America in NYC, the Delaware Contemporary Museum in Wilmington, DE, Zorya Fine Art Gallery in Greenwich, CT, as well as The Ukrainian National Museums in Cleveland and Chicago. Multiple group exhibitions include Palm Beach Modern & Contemporary (2022), Context Art Miami (2018, 2019, 2021), and Hudson River Museum (2020).

In 2020 her simultaneous US-Ukraine exhibit "Metempsychosis" incorporated a bi-continental panel discussion in The Revolution of Dignity Museum (Kyiv) and WhiteBox-Harlem (NYC) transmitted in real time via web stream hosted by The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America.

Rondiak’s work is part of a permanent collection of The Revolution of Dignity Museum in Kyiv, Ukraine, The Ukrainian Embassy in Bern Switzerland, Shevchenko Museum & National Museum of Decorative Arts in Kaniv, Ukraine, Ukrainian Embassy in Paris, Hudson River Museum in New York and private collectors. Rondiak’s landmark painted mural in the historic district of Kyiv, Ukraine, is a prominent part of Kyiv’s Street Art explosion.  

In 1943-1944, during the second Russian invasion of Ukraine in WWII, Ukrainian intellectuals and nationalists, Ola Rondiak’s grandfather among them, were forced to flee from their homeland to Western Europe or face certain death at the hands of Stalin’s secret service (NKVD).  A sympathetic Russian soldier warned Ola’s grandfather of his imminent arrest and he set out on foot, with his daughter Maria, Ola’s mother (then eleven-years-old) for western Europe.  His wife Paraskevia Michniak, Ola Rondiak’s maternal grandmother, stayed behind with their other daughter who was ill and immobile. The plan was for the family to reunite later.  The reunion never happened. The daughter, Ola’s aunt and namesake, never recovered and passed away in Kolomiya, Ukraine in 1944. On March 28th, 1947, Paraskevia was arrested by the NKVD, charged under Statute 20.54.1.A “Assisting the Ukrainian Partisan Army (UPA)” and sentenced by a military tribunal to 25 years of hard labor at the Women’s Strict Regime Prison in Mordovia, Russia. There was no trial, no court, and no judge.

While in prison, at great personal risk, Paraskevia began embroidering religious icons at night, by the light of the northern latitudes. She used cloth and threads from her clothes and fish bones for needles. In 1953 Stalin died, and in 1956 Nikita Khrushchev granted amnesty to political prisoners who were victims of Stalin’s repressions. Paraskevia received her “Certificate of Rehabilitation” on July 2nd, 1956 and smuggled the embroidered icons (which were strictly forbidden by Soviet authorities) out of the prison by sewing them into her clothes. Unable to join her family in America due to the Iron Curtain, she returned to Kolomiya, Ukraine after which a written (albeit censored) trans-Atlantic correspondence began with Ola’s grandfather and mother. In the late sixties, an American tourist successfully smuggled the embroideries to her family in the west.  Paraskevia passed away in 1975. She was well-known for her sewing, drawing, embroidering, and traditional cooking skills. This is only one story of millions of displaced, imprisoned, and repressed Ukrainians in WWII.

Since independence in 1991, Ukrainians have struggled to fight the forces of corruption and Russian influence. Ola Rondiak witnessed the Orange Revolution (2004) and the Revolution of Dignity (2014) first hand. Her collage “Maty Revolution”, a symbolic completion of her grandmother’s partially completed prison embroidery, captures the struggle of Ukrainians to move towards European values of openness and democracy in the face of a tyrannical regime.

In March of 2014, Russia illegally annexed Crimea, and invaded the sovereign territory of Ukraine in the Donbas region. To date, the casualties include 2,777 non-combatant civilians, 3,714 Ukrainian soldiers, 3,599 hybrid Russian forces, and 400-500 Russian regular forces. The death toll climbs daily.
--- “Behind the Lines”, Ola Rondiak, August 2017