Aleksandr Kryushyn, Morning on the Shore, oil, 32 x 55.
Aleksandr Kryushyn was born and raised in the Crimea during the years before Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian region in 2014. His warmly expressionist painting MORNING ON THE SHORE recalls happy childhood visits with his father to the Sea of Azov three decades ago during “the time when it was free,” he says. “I do not know if I will ever return to these places with an easel, so this picture is a memory of the smell and noise of that sea, of the sand and the bright Crimean sun.”
Kryushyn has been devoted to art longer than he can remember. “About five years ago, I saw one of my kindergarten teachers,” he says. “She was not surprised that I had become an artist, because she remembered that while all the other children were playing, I just painted and painted and painted.”
In 2004, he entered the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts in northeastern Ukraine, going on to work for several years as an assistant teacher in the painting department. After Russia occupied Kharkiv this past July, Kryushyn was forced to leave for a calmer region. “Cruise missiles destroyed several buildings around my studio” he says, “but it survived, although windows were blown out. Luckily, I was able to save my canvases.”
Despite continued uncertainty, Kryushyn finds strength though his belief that “the world around us is beautiful and diverse,” he says. “Despite the fact that there are many fears, grief, pain, and tears, there is also beauty and love. Every moment of life is priceless. This is what all my paintings are about.”
Find Kryushyn’s work at www.artfinder.com/artist/aleksandr-kryushyn.
This story appeared in the December 2022/January 2023 issue of Southwest Art magazine.