ARTIST STATEMENT

Unknown female faces from the past.
I remember seeing them since I was a child laying in bed.
They would either wake me up or appear faster and faster while I was trying to fall asleep.

Sort of like a nightmare only I was more intrigued than scared. 
I remember even wanting to see them sometimes when they weren’t there.
I would wonder how to get them to visit me again
Until one day they just never came back.

Only after becoming a mother
And moving to Ukraine
Did I begin to paint them in the garage. Faces emerging from my subconscious.
Realizing the connection years later.
But who are they?
People would ask me. Who are you painting?
I didn’t know.
Maybe they were women my mother knew when she was escaping Stalin’s regime at 11 years old?
Maybe my grandmother met them in the Gulag, imprisoned yet secretly embroidering icons out of fishbones?
I only knew that they had to be painted, sewn, collaged, sketched and cut out of cardboard.
Over and over again.

Then russia’s war on Ukraine began in 2014. again.
The power of the female emerged for me. again.
But this time in the shape of a Motanka. The ancient talisman.
We need to unite.
Again we need protection
And healing
And strength from our past.

A vessel.
Past and present
That is all.
I am.