About

Born in the USSR, my professional career as an artist started almost immediately, when I got into scribbling on the wallpapers of our apartment as a two year old. 

These artworks received very mixed reviews from the critics (parents), who mostly commented on the choice of the media rather than the artistic value itself. 

The true recognition came at the age of five in form of a publication in local newspaper, which immediately won the tough crowd of family members who jumped on board and were proudly showing the issue to pretty much everyone, whether they cared or not.

I guess this sealed the choice of a career path and creative work became my thing ever since. I continued drawing, with photography becoming my second passion as soon as I got my first film camera as a kid (and I still love the magic of developing your own films and prints especially in todays environment of all-things-digital).

Then, after school the love for fashion brought me to study the art of costume design and I spent four years of more drawing and painting, as well as mastering the sewing machine, working with fabrics, learning history, creating elaborate outfits and finally graduating as a theatre costume designer.

This combined with non-academic interests in street art, creating stencils and custom t-shirt designs gave me quite a good range of skills and awesome profession, which however was absolutely unsustainable in the chaotic post-USSR landscape.

Luckily those skills turned out being pretty universal, and this is how I found myself in a role of Graphic Designer, which  gave me invaluable experience in digital processes as well as interesting jobs and freelance assignments after moving to Australia over 10 years ago.

But once an artist – always an artist and nothing can substitute this need to express yourself creatively, and my pen on paper artworks are the products of this need.

EXHIBITIONS:

30 April – 21 May 2017

STROKES AND SQUIGGLES

Solo Show at St Michael’s Gallery

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3 March – 16 March 2017

ORIMONEY  

Solo show at  Off The Kerb Gallery

MEDIA: Orimoney Exhibition by Mariya Rovenko – Article by Postcards From

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March 2016

A STUDY OF DARKNESS