Yevgen Marchenko “Vitoria”

2020; oil on canvas; 70 x 100 cm

About artist: Yevgen Marchenko
“My love for drawing appeared in early childhood and by the age of 15 I had learned the technique of oil painting. However, then it was just a hobby. My education is not related to art, but it shaped my worldview. I am a PhD in social philosophy and philosophy of history. Between the ages of 25 and 33, I barely practiced arts. During this period, I wrote my dissertation and worked in a completely routine position. But, in 2014, just as I reached the age of Christ, an armed conflict broke out in my hometown. Of course, this affected my later life, my values and my work. Since that time, I have completely changed my lifestyle, and painting has taken a very important place in it. I have found the desire to express my perception of the world in visual patterns. I started with a clean slate in search of my own style.
I like symbolic, mythological, religious and pseudo-religious subjects. In the last couple of years I have become interested in portrait painting. This is what I have avoided before. I thought it was a very personal and incredibly responsible genre. At the moment I am attracted by the technique of oil painting on black canvas with an incomplete coverage. The black canvas is both the basis and a part of the composition. However, from time to time I try new styles and techniques.
My purpose is to show everything deeply hidden in the usual images and colors, and to present it through the spectacle of beauty. My belief is that there is beauty in everything, even in the seemingly ugliest things. Beholding faces from the point of a portraitist allowed me to understand that beauty can be found in every face. There are no ugly people, there are unsuccessful lines of sight and grimaces. Even faces with real defects and flaws carry hidden beauty. This is what I want to develop. This is what I intend to implicate into the various subjects of my artworks.”