Iryna Patalakha is a Ukrainian artist who has a relatively short yet glorious path on the local and international art stage. A person with a rare talent and a unique visual language, Iryna entered the art stage only in 2020, focusing her art mostly on floral motifs. Today, we are pleased to share her story on our blog.
A Long Neglected Creative Calling
Iryna Patalakha may be regarded as an emerging artist due to the relatively short duration of her artistic career. Iryna entered the art stage at a mature age. As she explains it herself, while she has been attracted to painting since early childhood and even created a couple of great works for her friends, she didn’t consider a painting career as a serious profession at first and dedicated all her time to her full-time job, family, and home routines.
A Life-Changing Chance
The outbreak of COVID-19 and the lockdown that followed turned many things in Iryna Patalakha’s life upside down. The loss of her job and a life-changing encounter with a top-grade artist who gave her a painting masterclass brought the dream of painting back to her life. Iryna recognized a unique chance to do what she had always been admiring in the challenges of those times and focused on painting as a career change.
Floral Motifs in Iryna Patalakha’s Art
Since that moment, Iryna has been painting full-time. Throughout the years, she has experimented with styles and colors, using watercolor, acrylic, and oil paints. There are many beautiful landscapes, seascapes, and abstract paintings in her portfolio of 60+ works, but floral motifs are the artist’s favorite painting object. Iryna Patalakha pays tribute to her love for flowers and makes every floral painting unique by recognizing the personality, character, and mood of each flower in her creative activity. She believes that her flower portraits can help people embrace the world in a new way and instill feelings of peace and tranquility in the viewers.
Migration to the USA
Iryna Patalakha was awarded the title of the Best Ukrainian in the profession of an artist in 2024. However, she was forced to move to the USA after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. She settled with her family in Tacoma, WA, and is currently undergoing the process of acculturation by learning English and setting up her life routines and creative activities in the new country.