Olya Baklan SWAc

 Olya’s childhood is deeply connected with the Crimea, where she spent all of her summers. Olya feels that her childhood memories have been stolen. Later, she often returned to Crimea on artistic quests. Her paintings full of premonitions of Russian aggression were exhibited in Crimea, and as far as she knows they are still there. In 1988 she received an AM from Academy of Fine Art in Lviv.

On arriving in the UK, Olya lived for several years in Bedfordshire and found inspiration in the local nature, in wildflowers, in the quiet poetry of rural life. As a result, in 2018-2019, she participated in several exhibitions of the Chelsea Art Society in London.

During the covid lockdown, she took part in a large art charity portrait project for key workers. Several of her portraits were on display on Oxford Street. In 2020, her landscape and abstract watercolours were selected for an exhibition of the Society of East Anglian Watercolourists.

‘Torbay reminds me of the Crimean landscape. I am mourning for the loss of my harmonious childhood world. The more I looked into ordinary things, the more hidden treasures I found and this approach allowed me to find my home and my inspiration -where I am.

Watercolour is the language of my feelings and thoughts. Wherever I am, I look for a connection of stories that have not yet happened or have happened in the past. These signs, symbols, traces are as pervasive as the water that carries the pigment to the appropriate place on paper.

The purpose of my experiments in watercolour is to show the magical nature of this technique. It is important for me not to lose the whiteness and freshness of the paper, thus leaving the room for unproven future signs.

“The Rose and the Yew” explores the profound dualities woven into human existence. The monumental rose becomes a symbol of love in all its fleeting beauty—radiant, delicate, and destined to fade. In contrast, the ancient yew, an enduring presence in British churchyards, evokes mortality, memory, and the mystery of eternity. Beneath its shadowed, poisonous canopy, the ghostly silhouette of a First World War nurse emerges, quietly evoking Agatha Christie’s formative years and her wartime experience. Suspended between life and death, beauty and decay, the human and the eternal, these contrasting symbols reflect the very essence of Christie’s creative universe: a world in which the fragility of life is inseparable from the enduring enigma of death.

 Watercolour on Paper

60x85cm

 Framed under glass