Capturing the intricacies of the sea is no easy feat. There’s a myriad of shades of blue on a single landscape, plus the splashes of water and the movement of seafoam. And yet, Ukrainian artist Alexandra Velichko does it perfectly in every single one of her works. Zooming in on breaking waves and beach scenes, the painter captures both the beauty and power of the ocean in her sweeping oil paintings.
Velichko started her creative journey in 2014. While she hadn’t painted with oil before that, she had completed an academic drawing course. Now, she is decidedly an oil painter. “I tried a little bit of watercolor, acrylic, and pastels, but the feelings that oil painting gives me cannot be compared to anything else; it’s so alive and tasty to work with,” she tells My Modern Met. “I work [in a] realism style, but over the years, I prefer to add more texture strokes to my painting. Sometimes a few parts have an abstract feeling, especially when I paint foam.”
Based out of Kyiv, Velichko hasn’t been able to get to the sea as often as she’d like. “I traveled a lot, especially before 2022. Every time I’d take my camera with me and make hundreds of reference photos that I could use later, but all them are nothing without the feelings that I got by standing on the shore, or on the deck of sailing boat.” Sadly, this changed with the war. “I haven’t left my home since the war started. Only this year, in February I allowed myself a little vacation to Portugal. It is not easy to travel now because our airports are closed for civilian flights and I have to go by car to the airport in a neighboring European country.”
Fortunately, her home in Kyiv is on a bank of the main river of Ukraine Dnipro and she gets to see a body of water when she wakes up and goes to sleep. “But my heart belongs to the sea, I am a professional diver and adore sailing,” she confesses. After all, Velichko describes the main influence of her paintings as “nature, definitely nature with its own beauty, power and strength.”
While Velichko has now moved away from hyperrealism, her goal remains the same. “I want my viewers to feel the salty air of breeze, to imagine how it feels to live next to the ocean even if you don’t,” she says.
To stay up to date with her creations, you can follow Velichko on Instagram.
Zooming in on breaking waves and beach scenes, Ukrainian artist Alexandra Velichko captures both the beauty and power of the ocean in her sweeping oil paintings.
While capturing the intricacies of the sea is no easy feat, the painter does it perfectly in every single one of her works.
“The feelings that oil painting gives me cannot be compared to anything else; it’s so alive and tasty to work with,” she tells My Modern Met.
“I work [in a] realism style, but over the years, I prefer to add more texture strokes to my painting. Sometimes a few parts have an abstract feeling, especially when I paint foam.”
“My heart belongs to the sea, I am a profession diver and adore sailing,” Velichko says.
Velichko describes the main influence of her paintings as “Nature, definitely nature with its own beauty, power and strength.”
While Velichko has now moved away from hyperrealism, her goal remains the same.
“I want my viewers to feel the salty air of breeze, to imagine how it feels to live next to the ocean even if you don’t,” she concludes.
Alexandra Velichko: Website | Instagram
My Modern Met granted permission to feature photos by Alexandra Velichko. Quotes have been edited for clarity.