George Billis Gallery | 11/1-12/6 | Fairfield, CT

Clarity of Expression

George Billis Gallery holds a solo exhibition of works by Ukrainian artist Armine Bozhko.

By Alyssa M. Tidwell

The striking artwork of Ukraine-born Armine Bozhko will be featured at George Billis Gallery’s Connecticut location and in the lobby of a commercial building in New York City this fall. Currently living and working on Long Island, Bozhko works with oils to create clean, simplistic compositions that are energized by bold, saturated color. Her ability to distill scenes down to their most essential elements is just a small part of what makes Bozhko’s work so captivating.

Houses Overlooking the Sea, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 in.

“Art provides an opportunity for me to depict the inner and emotional states of existence,” says Bozhko, who has been formally studying art since 11 years old. “Remaining within the form of representation, I aim toward achieving a level of abstracted reality. Even though my works are based on real subjects, during my creative process I distance myself from the subject while focusing on the emotional experience. Color, texture and form are the means of creating the materialized experience of this sensual reality.”

Long Cloud, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 in.

Although a classically trained artist, she’s also driven to explore the possibilities of modernism and was especially preoccupied with van Gogh during her teen years. “I was fascinated with fauvism, expressionism and later with abstraction,” the artist reflects. “The most important artists for me during my student years and into my professional career were Nicolas de Stael, Mark Rothko and Clifford Still. I was intuitively driven to the art that focused on color and form as the main language of expression. Through the years, my artistic work was a process of selection and reduction of the variety of pictorial elements in my art. This process was directed towards attaining the purity and the clarity of expression within my work.”

Cloud Over the Bay, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 in.

Lately, the rural and coastal scenes of her Long Island home have been the biggest inspiration for her works. “While at first sight, the linear coastal landscape seemed very minimal, the constant change of air and light created an enormous amount of variable content while the structure of the landscape remained as a constant. Every day provides an opportunity of novelty and mystery within the constraints of simple, minimal structure,” Bozhko explains.

“Even though the genre of the landscape can seem static and undescriptive, the paintings I create tell a story with the use of symbolism [through] visual elements and color. The images I create express the feeling of…the ephemerality of life, time and space…Our inner journey into the mystery of life. That journey is the only certainty.”