Oksana ZHELISKO ✿

'Mi allegerisco
tra le tue braccia
a posarti tutto
l'Amore addosso
che posso...'

~ Catherine La Rose ~

Classically trained in Eastern Europe, Oksana Zhelisko began her career as an artist in L’viv, Ukraine. Oksana entered the Ivan Trush College of Decorative Arts in 1996. There, she studied all aspects of art and decided to make painting, especially of murals, her specialty.

In 2001, she held her first solo exhibition at the L’viv State University of Ivan Franko. It was in preparing her works for this show that she realized that she had a love for the medium of oil. She finds that the truest hues are to be found in this medium due to its prolonged drying time and to its ease in mixing. She finds it best to begin her work, not on a crisp, blank canvas, but on one that has been coloured, and or stained to allow her chosen medium to release its inner beauty and charm. Although aptly able to capture any image with an artist’s eyes, Oksana’s work as of late has revolved around the theme of woman in various stages, poses and emotions. She equates her disdain of starting on a blank canvas to that of simply painting woman as an exercise in figure. In her view, woman is neither crisp nor blank, but coloured and  tinged; each being an image or an iconoclast  that is warm, or perhaps  cold, but always strong, alluring, full of mystique, and of course, true inner beauty. Her most recent works have been displayed in various galleries. Her clients include Stephen and Lynn Mandell. She currently resides in Edmonton, Alberta. She along with her loving husband is eagerly awaiting the birth of her first child.