Works in easel painting, mural painting, and graphics. 

Her main genre preferences are landscape, portrait, still life, and narrative composition.

She has mastered various techniques of oil and watercolour painting; in the field of printmaking - diatypes, in the field of decorative and applied art - batik.

Khrapchynska Alina Yevheniivna, Ukrainian artist, graphic designer, teacher.
She was born in Kharkiv on 11 July 1983.

She received her initial professional education at the painting department of the Kharkiv Children's Art School named after I. Repin (who graduated in 1998) and the Kharkiv State Art School (specialty "artist-designer", teachers - V. Chursyn, M. Serdiuk, V. Starikov, R. Ivanova, H. Semerzhynskyi, graduated in 2003).

She got her higher art education at the Faculty of Art and Graphic Arts of H.S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University, Master's degree (teachers - M. Azarkina, O. Radomska, Y. Chekardyn, V. Kulyk; graduated in 2015).

Member of the Kharkiv Organisation of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine (since 2015, painting section).
Member of the National Union of Artists of Germany (BKK Cologne), since 2023.
Winner of the international plein air contest "Best Artist 2020" (I nomination).
Winner of the international plein air contest "Best Artist 2021" (Grand Prix).

Participated in many international, republican, regional and city exhibitions and plein airs. She has personal exhibitions.

The artist's works are kept in private and public collections in Ukraine and the USA, China, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Mexico, Spain, Turkey, and other countries.

- 2016 "Painting by Alina Khrapchynska" Image Gallery (Chuhuiv, Ukraine)
- 2017 "Painting by Alina Khrapchynska" KhTMK Gallery (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2017 "Painting" Repin Art Gallery (Chuhuiv, Ukraine)
- 2018 "Exhibition" Gallery na ocnozu (Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic)
- 2019 "Dreams" Beit Dan Gallery (Kharkiv)
- 2020 "Travels of my palette" Kharkiv Repina Children's Art School (Kharkiv, Ukraine).
- 2011-2012 All-Ukrainian art exhibition "Christmas" (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2015-2016 All-Ukrainian art exhibition "Christmas" (Kyiv, Ukraine)
- 2016-2017 All-Ukrainian art exhibition "Nativity of Christ" (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2016-2017 All-Ukrainian art exhibition "Nativity of Christ" (Kyiv, Ukraine)
- 2016-2017 All-Ukrainian art exhibition "Nativity of Christ" (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- Personal exhibition "Painting of Alina Khrapchynska" gallery "Image" (Chuhuiv, Ukraine)
- 2016 All-Ukrainian art exhibition "Kharkiv Graphics" (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2016 All-Ukrainian art exhibition "Picturesque Ukraine" (Sumy, Ukraine)

- 2017 All-Ukrainian art exhibition "Kharkiv Graphics" (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2017 "Painting of Alina Khrapchynska" gallery of KhTMK (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2017-2018 All-Ukrainian art exhibition "Christmas" (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2017 All-Ukrainian art exhibition "Magic and Eternal" (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2017 All-Ukrainian art exhibition "Kharkiv-Donbas: history, traditions, modernity" (Mariupol, Ukraine)
- 2017 All-Ukrainian art exhibition "To the Day of the Artist" (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2017 International Watercolour Exhibition 2017 (Bangladesh)
- 2017 Personal exhibition "Painting" Art Gallery named after Repin. Repin Art Gallery (Chuhuiv, Ukraine)
- 2017 Collective exhibition "Greece" Gallery named after H. Semiradskyi (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2017 Collective exhibition "Greece" KhTMK Gallery (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2017 "Terchovská paleta - jeseń 2017" (Terchovo, Slovakia)
- 2017 "Sounds of the Bukovinian Romanian Cultural Institute" Paris, 18 October (Paris, France)
- 2017 "International plein air in Romania" (Bran, Romania)
- 2018 International Watercolour Festival "Fabriano" (Fabriano, Italy)
- 2018 "Ukrainian palette of Fabriano" (Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Tokmak, Lviv, Kharkiv, Ukraine).
- 2018 "The 1st International Watercolour Festival in the Czech Republic" (Prague, Czech Republic)
- 2018 International Autumn Salon "High Castle" (Lviv, Ukraine)
- 2018 The Second All-Ukrainian and International Exhibition-Biennale "Sea of Watercolours" (Odesa, Ukraine).

- 2018 International watercolour exhibition "Our incredible world in Kharkiv" (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2018 All-Ukrainian exhibition "To the Day of the Artist" (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2018 "Picturesque Ukraine" (Mariupol, Ukraine)
- 2018 "Graphics in Kharkiv" (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2018 "All-Ukrainian jubilee exhibition dedicated to the 80th anniversary of Honshu" (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2018 "Magic and Eternal" (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2018 Personal exhibition "Exhibition" Galerie na ocnozu (Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic)
- 2018-2019 All-Ukrainian art exhibition "Nativity of Christ" (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2018 "Golden Beetle" (Mykolaiv, Ukraine)
- 2018 "Black Mountain" (Vynohradiv, Ukraine)
- 2019 All-Ukrainian exhibition "Picturesque Ukraine" (Kropyvnytskyi)
- 2019 "Triennial of Painting" (Kyiv, Ukraine)
- 2019 Exhibition dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the eponymous Repina Art College (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2019 "European" (Chuhuiv)
- 2019 International exhibition "Intellect in Fashion" (Kyiv, Ukraine)
- 2019 "Art Beijing 2019" (China)

- 2019 All-Ukrainian art exhibition "Magic and Eternal" (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2019 International workshop / plein air "Heliopolis-2019" (Overview. Bulgaria)
- 2019 City Council "International Plein Air Sozopol" (Sozopol, Bulgaria)
- 2019 All-Ukrainian exhibition dedicated to the Independence Day of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine)
- 2019 Jubilee exhibition dedicated to the 175th anniversary of the birth of I. Repin (Kharkiv, Ukraine) I. Repin" (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2019 Project "Ways of Mastery" dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Kharkiv Municipal Art Gallery (Kharkiv, Ukraine).
- 2019 "Silver-Lend Art" (Chorna Tysa. Transcarpathian region/Ukraine).
- 2019 All-Ukrainian art exhibition dedicated to the Day of the Artist (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2019 Project "East-West Together", Lviv Palace of Arts (Lviv, Ukraine)
- 2019 Personal exhibition "With Dreams", Beit Dan Gallery (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2020 "Artists paint the world" National Law University named after Yaroslav the Wise. Art Gallery (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2020 "Women's ART 8" KONTRASTE galerie (Erwitt, Germany)
- 2020 All-Ukrainian art exhibition "Magic and Eternal" HONSHU (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2020 All-Ukrainian art exhibition "Christmas" HONSHU (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2020 "Re: Creation" Govedarov Gallery (Thessaloniki, Greece)
- 2020 International art online project "Other X" Museum of the History of Kyiv (Kyiv, Ukraine)
- 2020 Personal exhibition "Travels of my palette" Kharkiv Repin Children's Art School (Kharkiv, Ukraine)

- 2021 Repina Art Museum "Exhibition to the Day of Europe" (Chuhuiv, Ukraine)
- 2021 "Exhibition of animals" (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
- 2021 "Exhibition of Contemporary Art, Abstraction and Sayarsism" (Kyiv, Ukraine)
- 2021 "Exhibition of Contemporary Art, Abstraction and Sayarsism" (Vinnytsia, Ukraine)
- 2021 Exhibition "Ürgüp 10 International Art Symposium" (Cappadocia, Turkey)
- 2021 Exhibition "He and She. The idea of knowing the world" Veles Art Salon. Lviv (Lviv, Ukraine)
- 2022 Project "Saved Spring" for artists from Ukraine (Varna, Bulgaria)
- 2022 "Week of Ukrainian Art and Culture" (Blockhaus Ahlhorn. Veles Art Salon, Germany)
- 2022 Charity project "Colours of the Heart's Flame" in support of Ukraine
- 2022 "Insights and Outlooks" (Space for Art, Paderborn, Germany)
- 2022 "Week of Ukrainian Art and Culture ll" (Blockhaus Ahlhorn. Veles Art Salon, Germany).
- 2023 Art exhibition of famous Ukrainian artists "With a heart for Ukraine" / "With Ukraine in my heart" (Croatia, Split)
- 2023 Personal exhibition "Welten/Worlds" gallery Gabriele PAQUE (Bonn, Germany)
- 2023 "Vesillia in the Carpathians" (Kyoto, Japan)
- 2023 Personal exhibition "Dasein" (Paderborn, Germany)

"Worlds" of Alina Khrapchynska - a new arrow of a painterly impulse

The aesthetic paradigm of the Kharkiv art school, to which Alina Khrapchynska (born in 1983; at one time a student of the Repin Children's Art School, a student of the Kharkiv Art School and later the Faculty of Art and Graphics of the H. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University) belongs, is a new arrow of the painterly impulse. H. Skovoroda, a full member of the Kharkiv organisation of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine and a full member of the National Union of Artists of Germany (BKK Cologne)), has long been feeding on the neo-Baroque variability of the pictorial world. Because he feels the need for a neo-modern and neo-baroque variation of the pictorial language. Because "baroque (and neo-baroque - O.K.) variations are an illustration of the idea of mirroring, that every thing in the world reflects another, that microcosm reflects macrocosm and that everything is mutually reflected in general harmony" (V. Yermolenko, Eros and Psyche, K., 2023. P. 241).

This need for a common reflection and mutual resonance of the world of thoughts and things has long been felt by the "young", and now well-known and experienced Ukrainian artist.

Her painting is associated with the comprehension of the traditions of realism and modernism, which she conveyed in her own way, through the categories of plastic sensitivity, pictorial expression, decorativeness, and genre diversity that are closest to her.

Initially, the impression of her works was formed under the influence of student normativity, under the influence of a fictional "Repin", or rather realistic, tradition. It seemed that her pictorial world, despite the successful mastery of the principles of figurative painting, the realistic dimension of the classical pictorial means of expression - colour, pictorial mass, texture of painting, spatial and compositional solution, linear rhythm - appeared out of nothing, was a kind of creatio ex nihilo.

Later, with the rapid and confident creative progress, this pictorial world won the need for a wide search for "alternative worlds and an alternative "I"" (V. Yermolenko).

Therefore, it is not for nothing that this search so obviously developed into holistic pictorial texts that go far beyond their own creative locus, established traditions and controversial experiments in the field of painting.

Yes, these are indeed "Worlds" - unknown and sometimes elusive, but those that make a great impression on the viewer, captivate and are imprinted in their own visual memory. It is also not surprising that Alina Khrapchynska's "Worlds" became another sign of the "foreign" dimension of Ukrainian existence. Unfortunately, this dimension was defined after the notorious events associated with Russia's full-scale aggression in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, perhaps, Alina Khrapchynska would have expanded the boundaries of her artistic existence and being anyway, because her work is constantly filled with unexpected figurative visions, pictorial searches, experimentation with colour, composition, and is connected with the need to expand the boundaries of figurativeness and change the means of her own pictorial expression.

That is why her visual practice is a "new arrow of a pictorial impulse", because its motives are in real life impressions, constant fugation (from the Latin word fuga, which meant meanings: "escape", "fast movement", even "running"), in search of the energy of a new expressive dimension of painting, which dreams of renewing itself internally and visualising the "familiar unfamiliar" in unexpected angles, plastic solutions, and most importantly - in the symphonicity of colour, in its well-tempered key and in the illumination of spatial relations, which become almost the main pictorial theme of the author of the exhibition works. It seems that L.B. Alberti's idea of concinnitas, the harmonious unity and balance of existence, was crucial for Alina Khrapchynska; it was this idea that allowed the artist to combine microcosm with macrocosm, to achieve the bright calmness of beauty and its confident reproduction in her own paintings.

The wide palette of genres that the artist refers to is impressive - it is an urban landscape and a rural landscape, a marina and a veduta, genre compositions, a flower still life, sometimes, though a little less, a portrait. However, referring to each of the painting genres, the author of the exhibition works tries to go beyond the genre conventions, to achieve a certain synthesis and balance of figurative and semi-abstract painting forms - in a word, to achieve the integrity of the embodiment of the artistic theme chosen by the author, which semantically has a much deeper essence than what is visible on the canvas.

It is impossible to say that A. Khrapchynska's painting is rhizomatic (according to Deleuze), but it really resembles the Borkhiv garden of paths that diverge into infinite variety, with a subtle nuance of the sense of the natural in the human environment, reflecting the elements of water, sun, air, fire, and, in the case of Khrapchynska, stone, etc. The exemplarity of mimetic painting does not overflow into pictorial naturalism, and the ability to generalise the subject of the image turns into its pictorial formula. Orientation to the given plane of the canvas as a certain concept of space, in which the familiar elements of figurative language are transformed, gives A. Khrapchynska's works a certain intermediate dimension - because they express the interaction of visual narrative and hidden word in the artistic form itself.

Alina loves water, flowers, the mood successfully captured in the colourful shades of the urban landscape ("Twilight", 2022; "Light of the Passing Sun", 2023; "To the Heart of Bruges", 2023; "Fairy Tale Evening", 2020; "Girls' Talk", 2022 and other works), and this is not accidental: Alina Khrapchynska's visual matrix reflects a potentially non-figurative (non-objective) motif, because the synthetic combination of ornamentation, decorativeness and naturalness, inherent in the author's sketchbooks ("Etude", 2023; "Reflection", 2023; "Wharf", 2022; "Water Surface of Bruges", 2020; "Irises", 2022; "Safe", 2022, etc. ), reflects the ambivalence of figurative and non-figurative in contemporary painting. The combination of figure and background in genre, landscape, and floral scenes is distinctive: "Morning in Goa", "Morning Coffee", "Uchisar. Sunset", the brilliantly executed almost Whistlerian "Fog", all from 2022 - also reveal a significant potential for abstraction, which may be another facet of the Ukrainian artist's work in the future.

Sometimes the artist's works are characterised by "rhymed compositions", in which the subject matter, semantic motif, architectural and cosmogonic symbols seem to change, but this is not a repetition or a well-established course of thought - it is also a search for a "second, different nature", perceived by the inner vision, not just by the natural eye. This is especially true of the representation of the four elements - wind, sun flashes, water, air - conveying motifs of sadness, loneliness, solitude, the immutability of natural phenomena and the eternity of architectural forms in which the human figure remains almost a staff element. The artist's favourite themes in pandan are represented by conditional animalism, for example, her Geese, especially Buffaloes: While "Geese" emphasises colour contrast and clearly shows the layout of the space, "Buffaloes" - in their S-shaped and linear-vertical construction and gradual tonal accentuation of brownish-ochre in its contrast to the greenish-blue background - give the work a certain "Serovian" feeling and a deeply mythogenic, "Zeus" meaning (is it not a hint of "stealing Europe", but without it? ).

Exceptional in the artist's work is a floral still life - "Irises", "Poppies". The flower theme even breaks through into the landscape motif: "Cosy Yard", 2020, "Spring in Italy", 2019.

This testifies not only to the author's powerful colour sense, but also to her absolute and refined vision: without going into the details of a natural motif, she summarises it not only through the central composition, but also through the tonal solution.

Some might say that Alina Khrapchynska's painting is "feminine".

However, this femininity is the key not only to an intimate, lyrical, even poetic sense of the world of things, but also to what makes painting attractive in this digital and virtual world, allowing a modern person to comprehend the poetics of handmade and colour symphony.

And this is the key to the ever-present Neobarak's appeal of the Ukrainian artist's work and its further development.

Let's add more: Alina Khrapchynska's "Worlds" are not only traces of her travels, a kind of pictorial travelogue; not only an indication of the diversity of genres and means of visual expression, but also a kind of performative act of appeal: light up! That is, make the life-giving rays of painting illuminate the darkness in which humanity is now.

Oleh Koval,

art critic, head of the Criticism and Art History Section of the Kharkiv National Union of Artists,

laureate of the Ilya Repin Prize.