Sergei Ovcharuk
Artist’s Statement: HOOKED ON COLOUR
I live and breathe painting: it is my passion.
The power of color has been the dominant influence in my life since my early childhood, and its impact is still felt by me today, well into my adulthood.
I am in a permanent state of meditation on colour. Some might regard this as different, but I find it to be the very wellspring of my inspiration. The challenge for me is having no absolute limit to performance: what limits I have are only momentary in nature. In every work I approach, the promise of a great play of innovation is present; and in every case, I am overcome by a sense of “flight powered only by feeling”.
My meditations on colour provoke visceral emotional responses in me. These are almost palpable physical sensations – similar to those I feel when listening to music. The emotions stirred up by these contemplations I then channel into symphonies of colour on canvas. I feel that subconsciously I am replicating the delicate and subtle harmonies of music. Through my painting, I try to convey to viewers the same energy, happiness and joy that I feel in my encounters with the physical world. I call this energy an “absolute energy of Love”.
Art means everything to me and there is no greater expression of my love than being able to share with others the beauty and joy I find in the world. In the same vein, my hope is to transmit the same sense of well-being that I feel in knowing that a force for good rules over our consciences. I strongly believe that sensitivity to art both ennobles and enriches human life.
Biography
Sergei Ovcharuk (Sulima) is a dreamer and a romantic, with the soul of a sailor and the delicate hands of an artist. Sergei’s paintings offer a fresh view on the classic style, and immerse us in the mysteriously spiritual world of impressionism. The amazing combination of the old master’s painting traditions with expressive colors awakens imagination and leads to deep philosophical thinking.
Ovcharuk was born in 1963, in Lvov, Ukraine. He graduated from the Khmelnitskiy School of Arts in 1980. His youthful romanticism led him to the door of Russia’s oldest maritime school, LVIMU (now State Marine Academy) in St. Petersburg. However, under the influence of this historic city – one of the world centers of the arts and culture – he found himself consumed with a desire to follow a creative path, and took up the study of painting.
Meeting with the outstanding master-colorist Vladimir Borodin in 1982 was the transformative event in Ovcharuk’s life as an artist, and spending four years studying in Borodin’s studio provided the basis for his development as a painter. Ovcharuk’s romantic-symbolic sense of the world and his passion for color can be traced directly to this period.
Over the course of many years, Ovcharuk dedicated himself to his craft while at the same time constantly reexamining and refining what would become the philosophy that governed his work: ‘The world of the talking things’ in the still life genre, an intimate philosophical view of world told through observation of the simplest things.
The romantic component of the artist’s soul inevitably led him to impressionism, where the vitality of Sergei’s creativity met with bold harmonies of colour, the fruit of which constantly attract us with their dazzling newness and unpredictability. For his impressionistic paintings, the master primarily uses the pallet knife. In Ovcharuk opinion, the knife offers the best tool for his “blind painting” technique, which provides an excellent (and accurate) reflection of his soul.
After graduation from the Academy, Ovcharuk spent 7 years as a deep-sea navigator and deck officer in the merchant marine. Eventually, he dropped anchor in the beautiful and quiet harbor of Klaipeda, on Lithuania’s Baltic coast, where he lives with his wife and son. While he continues to paint, his artistic talent is not limited to painting: he has an outstanding bass, which he puts to good use in his church’s choir.
Ovcharuk is a Member of the Zhemaitija’s Artist’s Association, Lithuania.
He has participated in both one man and group art exhibitions , international art fairs in USA, Great Britain, Monaco, Switzerland, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, as well as the “Art-Gallery of V. Borodin” in St, Petersburg, Russia.
His paintings are represented in the private collections in USA, Canada, Great Britain, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Russia, and Ukraine.