Reflecting on your artistic journey, what key influences – whether artists, experiences, or ideas – have shaped your unique vision and ultimately led you to pursue the artistic path you're on today?

My artistic journey began in childhood. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been drawing — sometimes even on the wallpaper at home. I was about three years old when my mother asked, “Why did you draw such a big dragon on the wall?”

“That’s not a dragon, it’s a princess!” I answered. A few years later, my mom took me to art school. The teachers there were incredible — and the art history classes were truly fascinating. To this day, it still feels like a small miracle to see the originals of paintings in museums that I first loved as a child, when I studied their reproductions in books. Speaking of books — my father passed on to me a deep love of reading. That, too, has stayed with me for life.

I believe the foundation of my creative path lies in my family, in world literature, and, of course, in the inspiring teachers I had at art school.

Your artistic practice is profoundly shaped by your perspective that nature is the supreme artist. How does this belief influence the expression of creativity in your practice?

I’ve always been a restless child. One day, my cousin came up with a way to keep me busy for a while so I wouldn’t bother him — he showed me a group of garden ants and told me a little about them. And it worked: watching the ants turned out to be surprisingly fascinating. I think that moment — back in my grandmother’s garden, near an anthill — was the beginning of my interest in the natural world.

I’ve loved observing nature ever since — its shapes, rhythms, shades, and unexpected color combinations. I try to capture, through my art, even a small part of the quiet perfection that surrounds us. Every expression of nature is flawless. People cannot create better than nature, but we can share how it makes us feel.

In your statement, you mentioned that creativity and art can gently heal, calm, relieve stress, teach deep thinking, and teach deeper feeling. Could you elaborate on this line of thought?

When a person draws, they focus entirely on the process — on the here and now, on the present moment. In trying to capture what they see, they begin to notice things that just minutes ago went unnoticed. Imagination awakens, thoughts become clearer. And suddenly, for a little while at least, everyday worries fade into the background.

This is the essence of what we now know as art therapy.

How does your artistic practice engage with the invisible forces and intangible qualities that shape our experience of the environment, and what strategies do you employ to make these often-unseen elements visible and tangible to your audience?

In my artistic practice, I strive to capture and convey the subtle, intangible forces that shape our perception of nature — whether it's light, wind, silence, the trace of time, or the inner states.

Pastel is my primary medium because it allows me to work on the edge between the tangible and the ephemeral: dust, fragile texture, smooth transitions of color — all of it speaks to the fragility and transience of natural processes.

When I work from life, I focus not so much on precise form as on the atmosphere, the vibration of the moment. In my abstract pieces, I explore not the external landscape, but an inner sense of nature — a state of calm or unease.

In my video art, I experiment with time, movement, and sound — so the viewer can not only see, but also hear and feel the breath of the environment.

What can you tell us about your drawing, The Storm In My Garden? Could you walk us through the creative process of this work, from conceptual networks to the final visual language?

This work was born not from an idea, but from an experience. At the time, I was working on an abstract piece called Weather Dependence out on the garden terrace. Suddenly, the weather shifted — a strong wind picked up, and I accidentally ruined the next piece. Frustrated, I decided to paint what I was seeing and feeling right in that moment: the rising wind and the approaching storm in my garden.

I used ink and pastel. I worked quickly, expressively — letting the ink run and form blots. These accidental marks became a metaphor for unpredictability and tension. With pastel, I tried to capture the movement of the wind — its gusts, swirls, and pressure.

It was less about showing the storm itself and more about conveying an internal state — that sense of everything, inside and out, falling out of balance. A feeling of vulnerability in the face of an unleashed natural force.

Your experience in television and film production, as well as your role as the author of several documentaries, offers a unique perspective. How do these formats differ from your painting and drawing practices? Do you find that your audience tends to resonate more with the longer, more immersive formats?

Working in film and television has given me a different perspective on the passage of time and artistic form. In painting and drawing, the viewer chooses how long to look. In film, I set the pace, and the viewer follows. Cinema captures attention in a different way — it’s a tool to create atmosphere through sound, movement, and voice.

Fine art is silence, stillness, an inner response. It’s like touching a moment. Both formats are important to me — they simply speak in different languages.

Many people do connect more deeply with long, immersive formats. But sometimes a single painting can say more than an entire film — and that’s its power.

What can you tell us about the short video work Atmosphere? Could you share insights into its narrative, visual, and conceptual foundations? 

In the video art piece Atmosphere, I combined two visual layers: hands squeezing foam from a sponge, and footage of clouds and rain. It's an allegory of how humans extract the planet’s resources without considering the consequences. The imagery is simple, yet it carries a disturbing feeling — we keep taking and taking until there’s nothing left.

It also speaks to air pollution: industrial emissions rise into the atmosphere and return as acid rain. And it touches on radioactive contamination, which is deeply personal for me. I come from a country that suffered greatly from the Chernobyl disaster, so the theme of man-made catastrophes is not abstract — it’s very real.

I used a simple sound design — a soft hum and a rising hiss, like an approaching storm or the drops of rain. Atmosphere is my attempt to express, both visually and emotionally, what usually remains unseen but affects all of us.

In what ways does your artistic practice serve as a form of intervention, challenging or subverting dominant narratives surrounding the environment?

My practice is a way of speaking with the world and about the world — not from above, but as a participant. I often notice that the dominant view of nature reduces it to usefulness: what can be extracted, how it can be controlled. But I feel drawn to something else — to listening, sensing, being in dialogue. In that sense, my art is a quiet but persistent intervention into this habitual way of thinking.

I love working with pastel — it feels alive, light, almost breathing on the paper. I enjoy experimenting: combining different materials, trying new approaches. Ink, for instance, brings a sense of spontaneity — it can’t be fully tamed. And that’s important to me: I want my work to preserve the wildness and fluidity that nature itself holds.

Through drawing, painting, video, or sculpture, I try to convey a sense of closeness and respect toward the environment. Without aggression, but with a clear message: we are not above nature — we are part of it.

Art and artists play various roles in the fabric of contemporary society. How do you see artistic practices advancing sustainability and social consciousness?

Art makes us think.

It develops the mind, helps us see the world from different angles. When we encounter a work of art, we don’t just look at it — we start analyzing, searching for meaning, asking questions. Art doesn’t offer ready-made answers, but it helps us find our own way forward.

What message or call to action would you like to share with our readers?

What I want to say is simple: look around. Nature isn’t somewhere out there — it’s close, within us. It’s the air you breathe, the rain outside your window, the bird on the wire. Everything we do to nature comes back to us. Preserving it is our shared responsibility.

I’m not calling for grand acts — just begin with respect. For the land, for a tree, for an animal, for the very process of life. Pay attention. Don’t walk past it. This is our home — a common one. And it needs to be treated with care.

Know more about the artist here.

Cover Image:

Rose Wine, 2016, Digital photo by Aliaksandra Markava.

All images courtesy of Aliaksandra Markava.