Daria Zavadenko

Landscape, for me, is not a destination but a condition of seeing. I return to the same motif repeatedly—not to describe a particular place, but to understand how light, colour, and atmosphere shape our experience of it. The landscapes I paint are rarely tied to a specific location. Instead, they emerge from the feeling of recognizing a place that cannot be fully remembered. Working almost exclusively with a palette knife, I build each painting through broad gestures, layered paint, and deliberate reduction. As details disappear, relationships between light, colour, and space become more vivid. The physical surface of the painting becomes part of that search, allowing observation and intuition to exist simultaneously. Rather than documenting nature, I am interested in the moment when direct observation gives way to memory. What remains is not a faithful image of a landscape, but fragments of atmosphere, light, and rhythm reconstructed through experience. Each painting asks how a landscape continues to exist once it no longer belongs to geography, but to memory.

10th All Ukrainian Painting Triennial, Central Exhibition Hall of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine, June 19, 2025 - July 20, 2025 All-Ukrainian Cultural and Artistic Project Art of Millennia. Ukraine in Search of Origins Central House of Artists, National Union of Artists of Ukraine August 14 – August 31, 2025 Upcoming: Groundless (ongoing body of work, currently in development for submission to the Future Generation Art Prize)

As a self taught artist, I developed my practice through observation, persistence, and years of painting rather than formal instruction.