Featured Artist: Ilya Yarovy
Ilya Yarovy is an artist as dedicated to his country as he is to his craft. In 2025, he enlisted in the military while continuing to paint in his free time. His singularly complex work invites an equally careful response. We're struck first by a dazzle of colors, an exuberance combined with a precise lineation. But the sensory spectacle is simultaneously offset by the gravity of its subject. The work demands, one might almost say compels, a second and third look as we puzzle its implications. Before the full scale invasion, Yarovy focused on images of the beautiful: flowers, landscapes, portraits. His colors were always vivid and saturated. That expressive coloration is still present in most of his current work, but its import is not exactly celebratory.
The cover of this issue of the journal, which shows a severed, cobalt-blue head painted against a jeweled frame in which Madonna and Child are both missing, is titled “Where is Their God, Where is Their Religion?" Like the head of John the Baptist, it is being presented to us as an offering, which should alarm us. We're tempted to admire the Archimboldian detailing and the vivacity of its colors. The disembodied head is beautiful and its eyes seem full of longing. More life, it seems to say. Yet, surrounded by rivulets of blood and burned-out candles, the work suggests the sacrifices, losses, and absurdities of war.
The myriad horrors of war are hinted at more quietly in “The Fog.” Here we behold the fragment of a face, an eye signaling hardships both witnessed and lived, a figure stooped and old before his time. The area surrounding the fragment presses against the man. Yarovoy himself describes the painting as his attempt to capture “the feelings of people during the occupation, [it's] about the fear that arises from the fog of the unknown and disappears into it; about the awareness of tension, the psychological shock people experience during an occupation."
In “To be or not to Be” an old face with blackened eyes, shriveled arms, and with a red “X” tattooed across the chest speaks to grief over the death of the many artists killed either in battle or as "collateral damage." He writes “War kills more than just people. It kills opportunity. Every nation comes into the world not only with weapons, borders, or state institutions. It comes with a song, a word, an image, a temple, and a book. It is its art that makes a nation unique. Art is what gives it a face, a voice, and a memory. An artist does not create for himself. He conducts dialogues with future generations. A painting, a book, or a piece of music is a letter addressed to people the author will never see. But war tears this letter apart before it is even written."
Hanna Melnyczuk
Gorenka: Bits of War
20 × 31½ in., canvas, oil, 2023
Where Is God? Where Is Their Religion?
11½ × 16½ in., paper, watercolor, Easter, 2023
Two Worlds: The Illusion of Safety and the Peace of Paradise
78¾ × 63 in., acrylic and oil on canvas, 2023
The Fog There
19¾ × 27½ in., canvas, oil, 2026
To Be or Not to Be: The Art of Ukraine
14 × 19 in., paper, watercolor, 2026
Ilya Mykolaiovych Yarovy, born in 1983 in Sumy, Ukraine, comes from a family of artists. He studied at the Taras Shevchenko Republican Art School and the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv, graduating in 2008. Since 2001, Yarovy has exhibited extensively in Ukraine and internationally, including exhibitions in China, Switzerland, Lebanon, and Dubai. From 2022-2026, he was included in a traveling exhibit called “Don’t Close Your Eyes,” curated by Halyna Andrusenko from Kyiv and Hanna Melnyczuk from Massachusetts. Ilya became a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine in 2010. His work is held in Ukrainian, Chinese, and French museum collections, as well as prominent private and corporate collections. Currently, Ilya serves as a soldier in the Ukrainian army where he continues to draw and paint. You can see more of his work here.
Hanna Melnyczuk received an MFA from Mass College of Art. Her work has been exhibited at numerous venues, including a one person exhibit at Art Space in Maynard, MA, and Fitchburg State University, MA. She has participated in group exhibits at the University of Massachusetts Lowell; Mahoney Gallery; The Gallery at the Piano Factory in Boston; The Danforth Museum in Framingham; Tufts Gallery; The Brush Art Gallery in Lowell; Newton Art Center; Worcester Art Center; Concord Art Association; The Umbrella Arts Center; and other regional galleries and institutions.Hanna published a series of drawings about the war in Ukraine in her book Don’t Close Your Eyes (Arrowsmith Press, 2023). In 2023, Hanna curated the traveling exhibition Don’t Close Your Eyes, featuring the work of Ukrainian artists in response to the war in Ukraine. Hanna teaches at the University of Massachusetts and Fitchburg State University. Her work can be viewed at hannamelnyczuk.com