About
Short BIO
Olly Karpenko is a Kyiv-based visual artist working primarily in watercolor, monotype, sepia painting, and ink drawing. Her artistic practice is rooted in attentive observation and explores urban and natural environments through series-based projects combining direct visual experience with experimentation.
Originally trained as a mathematician and later working professionally in psychology and socionics research, she approaches artistic practice as a form of perception and understanding.
Her works often focus on the fragile continuity of everyday life, infrastructure, movement, landscape, plants, birds, and marine subjects.
Field observation, experimentation, and long-term visual inquiry form the basis of her artistic process.
Olly’s work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions in Ukraine and internationally, including Finland, Poland, France, and the United States. In 2024, she became a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine.
Fragments of Process
Artist Statement
My artistic practice is rooted in attentive observation and develops through watercolor, monotype, and ink drawing. I work with urban and natural environments, exploring the fragile continuity of everyday life and the structures that sustain it.
Direct visual experience is the starting point of my work. Rather than reproducing reality, I am interested in its transformation through perception, memory, and emotional experience. Flowers, transport systems, infrastructure, birds, landscapes, and ordinary city spaces become part of an ongoing visual dialogue between observation and interpretation.
Recent projects, including Ljutyj 2022, #KyivCityExpress, and Helsinki–Kyiv, reflect on continuity, resilience, and the changing perception of familiar spaces during wartime.
Experiment remains an essential part of my practice. Through watercolor monotype, layered composition, and graphic techniques, I explore the space between precision and unpredictability, structure and atmosphere.
I see artistic work as a form of attention — a way of slowing perception and rediscovering the complexity and value of the everyday.