Alona Petliarska

I paint the language of myth — where the feminine, the wild, and the ancient become one. My works draw on Slavic folklore, Japanese spirit lore, and the particular quality of northern light.

I don't depict women. I inhabit them. Each painting begins with research — into mythology, into the body, into the archetypes that shape how women have been imagined and how they have imagined themselves.

My background is in choreography. I studied at the National Academy of Managerial Staff of Culture and Arts in Kyiv, where I developed a sensitivity to the body in space — to the tension between stillness and movement, and how a single gesture carries an entire story. That understanding runs through everything I make.

Originally from Ukraine, I came to Scotland following art and following something quieter — a need for wild landscape, for salt air and ancient presence. Living among standing stones five thousand years old, in seasons of extraordinary darkness and sudden luminous summers, has fundamentally changed what I paint and how I see.

I work in oils, watercolour and acrylic — sometimes with mixed media. The work is slow by intention. Each painting is a single original.

I am a Member of the Society of Scottish Artists (SSA) and have exhibited at the National Gallery of Scotland, Pier Arts Centre, and North Light Gallery. Commissions are available from £2,000.