This is the story of a Ukrainian artist, under the pseudonym Ulyana Koloda, who paints abstract paintings and quick sketches to distract herself during rocket attacks. It’s not as scary as it was in early 2022. But her psyche is still not coping. She says that her life is becoming more and more surreal as if it were happening on a big screen in a special effects movie theater.

The city of Dnipro has always been industrial and majestic. Since childhood, I remember the wide Dnipro River (the city and the river have the same name) with its almost two-kilometer-long bridge, wide roads, long avenues, huge parks, and endless blue sky.

More info: Instagram

Image credits: uliana_koloda

By now, childhood is far in the past, the city has grown and swallowed up uninhabited areas. And this big city with a population of almost two million is shelled with rockets almost every night. At the beginning of the war, I often walked around the empty city. Shops had boarded up their windows with plywood and sandbagged their buildings. People went abroad in search of a better life. My relatives and friends also left. Over time, strangers (IDPs) filled the emptiness of the streets. People, like hardworking ants, hurried about their personal affairs every day. Local transportation began to resume, and it was both joyful and terrifying at the same time. Strangers were too stressed psychologically from the horrors of war. From time to time I got into unpleasant situations with refugees. They consider everyone to be an enemy. I realize that this is an even more difficult period for them. A lot of people have seen their loved ones, families, and friends die. They have seen their homes destroyed in seconds.

Image credits: uliana_koloda

Image credits: uliana_koloda

To distract themselves from terrible thoughts and reality, some people paint reflections on the war. On the contrary, I am fighting for the right to live in a world where this does not happen. Life has become too precious for me, and creativity is too precious for an artist. I don’t want to spend a single second on something terrible. So I take pieces of paper and create quick drawings, sometimes I paint more successful ones on canvas. The main thing is not to waste time, to catch every idea and reflect it, to sleep a lot, to have food and water, and the supplies of paint and canvas with paper have also become the main value for the artist.

If you are interested, the artist has a page on Instagram where you can more closely examine and track changes in her abstract spots.

I also ask you to write in the comments your stories related to the creation of abstract compositions and so on. Write your reflections on viewing the photos. All your comments are valuable.

Image credits: uliana_koloda

Image credits: uliana_koloda

Image credits: uliana_koloda

Image credits: uliana_koloda

Image credits: uliana_koloda

Image credits: uliana_koloda

Image credits: uliana_koloda

Image credits: uliana_koloda

Image credits: uliana_koloda

Image credits: uliana_koloda

Image credits: uliana_koloda

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