Maria Perchuk

I began my artistic path in 2017 in Kyiv, when I entered the College of Art and Design to study graphic design. It was there that I understood that design could not fully convey what I felt. My work has always been an intimate reflection of lived emotions — a personal archive of feelings that have shaped me. After graduating in 2021, I chose to follow a direction where my emotions could find their true visual language. I continued my studies at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv. From that moment, each painting became a visual embodiment of inner states — vulnerability, tension, tenderness, silence, resistance. I do not attempt to depict reality as it is; instead, I paint the world as I experience it — through perception, memory, and sensation.

The outbreak of the war in Ukraine profoundly transformed my artistic language. It became a decisive turning point in my practice. Red entered my palette and has remained there ever since — not merely as a color, but as a pulse. Color itself turned into a direct expression of my emotional condition, carrying anxiety, grief, strength, love, anger, and the instinct for survival.

In 2024, I moved to Germany. In 2025, I began studying at the Academy of Arts in Karlsruhe in the class of Professor Plessen, continuing to develop my practice within a new cultural context. In my work, color is never decorative — it is psychological. It speaks before form. Through layered textures and shifting tones, I create spaces where the viewer can encounter not only my inner world, but perhaps fragments of their own.