Oksana Svizhak. The Earth Garden

The exhibition consists of two parts: paintings created in Ukraine and paintings created during plein airs in Lithuania. All the works were created in 2021-2024.

‘Before the full-scale invasion, I was working on a series of paintings called ‘Life in a Glass House’. It was inspired by greenhouses and greenhouses in Kyiv. I was interested in the illusory nature of the transparent wall that separates the real from the imaginary, and this self-identification depends on which side of the glass we are on. After the full-scale invasion, I realised that it was very much an allegory of the state I was in at that moment: I was overwhelmed by the feeling of living in a ‘glass house’, where the walls are very fragile and invisible. The house took on an incorporeal form, its walls became thin, and for many people it remained only in memories and dreams, in which, despite everything, life and light abounded. Continuing to work on the paintings, I filled them with new meanings and allegories, adding the symbol of a ‘gardener’ - a person endowed with a sacred mission to sow the seeds of new life. When the land is scorched and hope disappears, a person appears and starts planting a young garden. This bright image of a garden and life in spite of everything has become the main one in my art. A person creates a world around him or her in which he or she wants to exist, and it becomes a reflection of his or her inner self.

For me, Lithuania is equivalent to a ‘second home’. My acquaintance with it began in 2014 with my first plein air in Lithuania. Even then, Lithuanians understood the challenges of the time and the dramatic situation in which Ukraine found itself more than anyone else.

The second part of the exhibition consists of paintings created in Lithuania during plein airs in 2022-2024. These short weeks were my creative rehabilitation and art therapy. The paintings created in Kintai, Moletai and Nemyrsyte are an ode to nature, contemplation, search for a person's place in it and a sense of being one with the world around us.

When preparing the exhibition ‘Earthly Garden’, we chose figurative paintings created in Ukraine and landscapes of Lithuania. In this way, we managed to unite man and nature, Ukraine and Lithuania, beauty and difficulties, challenges of the times, mutual assistance, anxiety and love. Life is a garden.