About
I draw to slow down and paint to let go.
Dariia Taradai is a Ukrainian visual artist based in Valencia, Spain. She works across two practices: drawing in graphite and ink, and painting in acrylic and oil.
Her training is academic: long observational studies of light, cloud and the human body. From that base the work moves in two directions. In drawing, towards dense, ornamental ink compositions where figures, trees and patterns grow into each other. In painting, towards colour and movement, with landscapes that bend into swirling skies and abstractions built from the same gesture.
Before moving to Spain she lived and worked in Denmark, where her paintings entered private collections. Since arriving in Valencia she has begun to paint the city itself: its rooftops, its light and its sea.
Works in private collections in Denmark, Ukraine and Spain.
Artist statement
Graphite and ink ask for patience: a cloud takes days, an ornament takes weeks. Paint asks for the opposite, a decision made in one movement. I need both. The drawings are where I look; the paintings are where I answer.
