The artist uses a combined technique: he takes acrylic paints as a basis and draws with oil paints on top of it. “It is very important for me to get the effect of certain glow from my paintings. Speaking briefly, my credo in coloristics is – light is color and color is light,” stressed the artist.
After reaching the maximum color intensity Yevhen Leshchenko lovingly draws out not only the compositional center of his paintings but also all the details on the background: every bud, flower, leaf, and bug. Everything is in a static and balanced state, on canvases that are often of quite big size there is not a centimeter is missed. “There is a series of paintings with flowers that do not exist in wild life and I come up with a certain symbiosis – new forms, and sometimes there are totally realistic flowers as, for example, in the painting Joy of Blooming. Sometimes paradoxes happen when a small character, a butterfly, for example, is pictured in gigantic proportions. My style ‘paradise art’ began to take shape with the painting Dreams that Fade, however, another painting made later Cat’s World is more significant of that style,” said Leshchenko. By the way, the canvas Cat’s World was considered the best at the International Art Biennial. Leshchenko won the Grand Prix for it.
Currently the artist lives in a country house outside Kryvy Rih. “I am an unsociable person,” said Leshchenko. “In my paintings I create the world that reflects my soul.”
Leshchenko graduated from the National Academy of Art and Architecture, he is a member of Writers Union. Back in the 1970s, when he was still a student, he began to draw very colorful paintings influenced by folk art that was not accepted at the time of stagnation. In search for his own vision the artist created an original style, which later, during the exhibition of his art works in America, was called paradise art.
Today pictures made by the master are in private collections in Russia, France, the UK, the US, Canada, Japan, the Czech Republic, Germany, Holland, and Sweden, while exhibitions are successfully held in Kyiv, London, Paris, New York, Chicago, Toronto, Washington, and Bonn.
Leshchenko consideres his painting to be the most precise and most sensitive reflection of the internal state of his soul – it is a world that also fascinates audience. “I want to live there,” said a little girl looking at the paintings with sheer amazement. His paintings make the same kind of impression also on adults and art professionals.
