Oksana Zhelisko

Oksana Zhelisko

''My main goal as an artist is to express my feelings. Not each and every feeling or emotion, just the ones that hold me captive, those that are intertwined into my soul. Releasing them on to a blank canvas provides a catharsis of peace and serenity for me. I have yet to succeed in creating a painting that is true to the passion, vision and courage that I have in my mind’s view of the painting. One day, I hope to be able to execute what is inside me and transmit it to those who see my work so that my love and zest for life is what underlies all of my work. ENJOY!''

Oksana Zhelisko

''Classically trained in Eastern Europe, Oksana began her career as an artist in L'viv, Ukraine. Oksana entered the Ivan Trush College of Decorative Arts in 1996. There, she studied all aspects of art and decided to make painting, especially of murals, her major. In 2001, she held her first solo exhibition at the L'viv University of Ivan Franko. It was in preparing her works for this show that she realized she had a love for the medium of oil. She finds that the truest hues are to be found in this medium due to its prolonged drying time and its ease in mixing. She finds it best to begin her work, not on a crisp, blank canvas, but on one that has been coloured, and or stained to allow her chosen medium to release its inner beauty and charm.

Although aptly able to capture any image with an artist's eyes, Oksana's work as of late has revolved around the theme of woman in various stages, poses, and emotions. She equates her disdain of starting on a blank canvas to that of simply painting woman as an exercise in figure. In her view, woman is neither crisp nor blank, but coloured and tinged; each being an image or an iconoclast that is warm, or perhaps cold, but always strong, alluring, full of mystique, and of course, true inner beauty.''

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