A collection of expressive portraits from Oksana Basarab’s “Shades of Sadness” series, depicting emotional faces in an abstract painterly style, with bold brushstrokes, muted colours, and themes of grief and resilience during war time.

Shades of Sadness

Is the series of female portraits is a deeply personal projection a visual reflection of the emotional weight carried through the years of war.

Each face channels a response to daily news, to the destruction of homes, schools, hospitals, museums to the loss of life and of peace.

It is a study of self through sadness:
How long will this grief move me to paint?
How long will the need to release it live in my body?
How much sorrow can be held and transformed through image?