Roksolyana Pidhainy Benoit fine artist

Roksolyana, the daughter of a Ukranian mother from Quebec and a Ukranian History Professor from Kharkiv, spent her early childhood in both Toronto, Canada and Alabama. She currently resides in Toronto, Canada where she graduated from the Ontario College of Art in 1997.  She has participated in a number of exhibitions, including "Home Coming" at the Taras Shevchenko Museum, September 2016. She is a painter and pastel artist.

 

After over two decades of painting and drawing, her formative influences continue to be great masters like Rembrandt, for his emotionally evocative portraiture and the still life pastels of Cezanne and Degas for their technical brilliance and their innovative approaches to articulating form.

 

A strong personal influence on Roksolyana is her family and Ukrainian background. In this respect, family and family traditions are a common theme in much of her work. As with many families, the dining table is at the heart of daily gatherings and celebrations, and Roksolyana continues to keep the traditions of her parents and grandparents alive in both her art and in her own Ukrainian kitchen.

 

In her still life paintings, such as "Homage to Borscht", we can see these varied influences commingling. This vibrant pastel incorporates all of the ingredients that go into a hearty bowl of borscht. Here is a still life that suggests a love of both family and tradition, and communicates that love through luscious color and rich form. The playful title of the work implies something of the lightness of all happy families eating, laughing and arguing together around the dining table, something many of us know and seek to create at our own tables in the same spirit of joy, with a continuing appreciation and respect for the traditions of the past.