Alona Petliarska
Born in Ukraine, trained in choreography, living among standing stones in the north of Scotland — Alona Petliarska paints from a place where body and myth meet.
Her work began in movement. Studying dance in Kyiv taught her to read the body as language — a single posture can carry the weight of an entire story. That sensitivity migrated into paint: the way a figure holds its hands, the angle of a head, what is hidden and what is shown.
She came to Orkney following something she couldn't name yet. The ancient landscape answered. The Slavic folklore she grew up with — the rusalky, the berehyni, the wild feminine — found something in these five-thousand-year-old islands that recognised it. Two old worlds met in her studio, and the paintings followed.
Her figures are not illustrated. They are inhabited. Each painting takes weeks — months — and holds something that resists being explained quickly. Paint you feel before you understand it.
