Echoes from Ukraine

Beaux-Arts de Paris, Quai Malaquais, an October afternoon unfolds as storm Benjamin fills the air with wind and rain. The Seine moves fast and the streets below are almost empty. Inside the large studio where Daria is waiting for me, the sound and atmosphere change. It becomes slower, softer, like breathing. Dozens of easels stand across the open floor, each a small universe of its own. Her table is covered with sketches and jars of brushes. The air smells of turpentine and paint. On the wall, a canvas shows her little sister and their dog sleeping in the Kyiv metro, under a sky of blue, indigo, and darkness. “I didn’t want to paint the war,” she says. “Only the waiting. The not knowing when morning will come.” She pours me a cup of tea, I open my notebook, and we begin to talk.

Daria, on that rainy and stormy day, working on her latest creation.

The Years of Warm Light

Daria was born in Kyiv and has painted for as long as she can remember. Her mother noticed early that she and her twin sister, Mariana, shared a quiet obsession with drawing, and sent them to art school while they were still young. “We had two schools,” she says. “Regular school in the morning, art school in the evening.”

As she grew older, art became her language. She studied drawing, color theory, and composition at the Taras Shevchenko State Art School, one of Ukraine’s most respected programs. Later she entered the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture, where she began working mainly with oil. Her early paintings were bright and serene, filled with light and warmth. “Everything felt stable,” she says. “I painted the sun.”

The National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv where Daria has studied

When the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, Daria left Kyiv with her mother and sisters. They reached Berlin, then Orléans, where a French family took them in. From one day to the next, she couldn’t paint anymore. The world had turned grey, and her hands refused to move.

Finding Freedom in Blue

She spent weeks trying to find a way to let her emotions breathe, to make them visible again. Then, one quiet afternoon, she mixed blue and black, and something inside her shifted. “It worked,” she says. “I could breathe again.” Gradually, her palette began to change. The bright tones of her Kyiv years softened into deep shades of blue and indigo. “These darker colors help me speak,” she explains.

Daria in her Paris studio, painting in indigo.

Her work now mixes impressionistic light with the energy of expressionism. Architecture and nature appear in unexpected shades. Each layer brings a quiet vibration, a sense of something moving beneath the surface.

Exhibitions and Recognition

Then came another moment of light. In 2022, Daria was admitted to the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, her first real studio since leaving home. The school became her new rhythm. The studio where she goes whenever she has time is large, full of movement and sound. Students come and go, speaking different languages, music playing softly in the background.

Inside Les Beaux Arts de Paris where Daria now has her studio

Daria works in silence, concentrated, sometimes using a brush, sometimes her hands. “I like to feel the paint,” she says. It felt like finding balance again, a quiet steadiness returning with each stroke. “In Kyiv, everything was about perfection,” she says. “Here, I can be more free.”

Daria at the Beaux-Arts, beneath her Train Series painting.

Since arriving in France, Daria’s paintings have been featured in several group shows in Paris, including at Élysion, the Victor Lyon Foundation, and in collective exhibitions at the Beaux-Arts. Her work has also been shown in Kyiv as part of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine’s cultural programs. Her next presentation, Influence, will feature her new piece Sister and Dog in the Kyiv Metro, a painting built layer by layer that carries both memory and resilience.

What Remains After the Storm

Daria shares a small apartment in Paris with her twin sister, Mariana. “She paints too,” Daria says. “I’m faster, more direct. She’s slower. But we help each other.” Life in Paris isn’t always easy, but for Daria it’s a place of constant discovery, where every day brings new emotions. She misses Kyiv, the trams at dawn, the smell of wet streets after the rain, yet painting keeps her steady, a way to stay connected to everything that moves and changes around her.

Daria and her sister Mariana in their studio – photo by Misha Zavalny

Outside, the storm drifts across Paris. Rain hits the windows, lights shimmer through the blur. Inside the studio, Daria adds one more line of blue near the sleeping figures on her canvas, then steps back. Her hands are stained, her eyes calm. Painting has become her way of holding everything together, Kyiv, Orléans, Paris, the people she loves, the memories that remain. “Blue keeps me calm,” she says. “It’s the only color that stays.”