MY DANAIDE

Natalya Pravda, Ukraine

Natalya Pravda was born in 1986 in Ukraine. In 2009 graduated from the Pridneprovskaya State Academy of Construction and Architecture. After graduation from the academy she continued her education, honing her skills in painting and sculpture. Earlier she worked a lot with bas-reliefs and monumental painting, but after some time she decided to devote herself completely to painting. Currently, Natalia lives and works in Dnepr, Ukraine. Natalia is an artist who experiments with different techniques and source materials to create her works. Her images range from abstract to figurative; they often contain literal or indirect references. Despite all the possible similarities, Natalia encourages a more open reading of her work, warning that: "We have the ability to read things, to read everything in what we understand. The purity of color and its interaction with the canvas shows the quiet revelation that I try to convey in my works. I try to let the painting create itself, to create the conditions in which it will grow, become something. I don't build the painting brick by brick, like you would make a brick wall, but more create the conditions and let anything happen, and suddenly it happens. I rely a lot on the nature of the materials I use, so, sometimes it's really an exploration. It's like you go into a space where you've never been before and discover things that you didn't know were there. It's more and more interesting to me. It's always the surprise factor, so you can't predict when you put this element and that element together and the idea or the end result is good enough. There are no recipes there, and it's no good to repeat the same thing over and over again and think it will produce the same result, because there's a lot of improvisation, but that improvisation is based on experience. There's not too much time to think about it, so it's better to be ready to act when the moment is right. Painting is about leaving traces somewhere, just as our lives leave traces in space or on walls or in the environment in which we live. So I try to leave traces and understand the canvas as a place where inevitably was, where things happen, where life happens. Although I always rely on what I've done so far and on my experiences, I have to risk everything I have. I put everything I have on the next painting or the next canvas. And suddenly you can feel completely empty, feel like you have absolutely nothing. It's like starting from scratch, and it's very scary. I believe in the idea of professionalism in painting, which some artists don't like. And even if you have a talent for something, and you know - it's going to be something that's worth existing for a while, you have to do your best."