Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence. ;-Henri Matisse ; ; Oksana looks back on the past quite a bit and her childhood has;great influence on her present collections. Her fascination with;architecture began when her father took her on long walks through the;city of Vilnius, Lithuania. He would point out the foundations, beams;and chassis which created the towers of the town. While holding her;father's hand, Oksana remembers how strange it was to be part of these;crumbling buildings, for these churches, halls, and bridges had been;there long before she was born and will remain long after. The need to;permanently document a moment in time is a theme that runs throughout;Oksana's work. ; ;Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad. ;- Salvador Dali ; ; The study of decay is one that requires a sharp eye. Oksana;loved the idea of a crumbling wall- to capture the gritty texture of;brick- to see the delicate balance between a work defeated by time- yet;still defying gravity is to see the divine through detail. Many people;who take a cursory glance at Oksana's drawings believe them to be;photographs. It is not the accuracy of her hand that represents this,;but the accuracy of her eye. Oksana once explained that a lamp dimly;lit on a foggy street should never be drawn with sharp edges, that the;boundaries between what we see and what we want to see should be;necessarily blurred.Permanence can be similarly witnessed in Oksana's;favourite medium. Charcoal is a tricky substance that once pressed onto;a page can never be removed- only augmented. The concept of taking ash;and recycling it into art is one that appeals to Oksana. Her present;drawings are done in black alone, which is what makes her work such a;study in contrast. ; ;The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. ;-Aristotle ; ;The black lines on white paper may be intrepid, but as Oksana;commented, these lines are rounded and smugged until you possess a;spectrum of gray. Oksana notices the same thing in her life- the;jarring move from the USSR, the incredible trust she placed in her Love;to come to Canada, the devotion she possesses in raising her beautiful;children. Oksana is intuitive and extremely sensitive to the;environment that surrounds her. After leaving art and coming back to;it, she has discovered that drawing is an integral piece of herself;that refuses to lay dormant. Oksana loves detail and the detail in her;life is an intimate part of her identity. ; ;God is in the details. -Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (Architect) |
|
|
|