Cranes in the patterned sky (2023) Painting by Lana Okoneshnikova

My daily life I usually live in a state where parallel live "me", "world" and "many other people around and their world". That is why I am from time to time immersed in history, especially in terms of the origins of races and nations, the formation of communities, cultures, their interactions, transformations within epochs that bring about global and historical changes, etc. As I get deeper into this, it’s like I can have the option of belonging to the modern world with all of its people and the world, the people who have become part of history. In another such outburst of fascination with the issue of national identity, I felt the need to express my impressions. There are cultures that attract me more than others, of course. One of these cultures belongs to Japan. But originally I did not plan to depict here the impression from it. Canvas prepared for the ready idea, another. In the first stages of this work, I saw its continuation in different ways every time. So its filling smoothly and quietly turned in a completely new direction. One day I sat in front of the painting and suddenly I realized what I wanted from it. For me here is also interesting the following fact. That’s around the same time I ran out of the audiobook that I listened to in the background at work. And I took my scheduled-to-listen-books-list that I had to and chose the one which was already downloaded, so the only thing I had to do was press "play". Book by a Japanese author. This is not a fantastic coincidence, because I often listen/read Japanese authors. But in this book the main character (Japanese) turned out to be a portrait painter of the European school, which was completely unexpected to me. And the topics that the book touches are directly related to the ones that my brain has been scrolling through in the months leading up to this work. Including topics related to national identity, the intersection of cultures, history. In the end, this plot became a visual symbol of my attempt to approach a culture so different from that of my homeland.

Oil, linen on wooden bars
This artwork is sold unframed.
Ready to hang.
There is an author's signature on the front and description on the back.
A certificate of authenticity is enclosed.

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