Oleksandra Shofarenko paints the way embroidery is sewn — one bright thread at a time. Her compositions are dense and symmetrical, borrowing from votive folk painting, botanical plates and the margins of illuminated manuscripts.
Every surface is flat and deliberate: no gradients, no haze. Colour does the work — lavender against gold, turquoise against crimson — held in place by a crisp dark line.
She trained as a book illustrator, and it shows. Each painting reads like a spread from a story you half-remember.
“I want a painting to feel like a festival seen from a quiet room — all of the noise, none of the crowd.”
Everything begins as a pencil grid. Motifs — suns, waves, forests and flame — are placed like type on a page, then flooded with paint mixed to sit perfectly flat.
The outline comes last, in one sitting, with a single worn brush she refuses to replace.