Oksana Fursa

Oksana Fursa (b. 5 July 1972, Kyiv) is a Ukrainian ambidextrous artist, painter, illustrator, designer, founder of the Ukrainian School of Design (1992), Doctor of Art History, professor.

In 2014, she was awarded the title ‘Pearl of the Ukrainian Folkart’ for creating a stunning series of works ‘Wonder Animals’, ‘Apple and Honey Fairy Tale’, ‘Patchwork’, ‘Moon Lace’ for the National Historical and Cultural Reserve ‘St Sophia of Kyiv’, which undoubtedly inscribed herself in the history of Ukrainian contemporary art.

She graduated from the Faculty of Art and Graphics of the Tallinn Academy of Design (Estonia). She received her second degree at the Faculty of Architecture of the Kyiv Civil Engineering Institute (Ukraine). She lives and works in Kyiv. From 1992 to the present day, she has been the President of the Salvador Dali Academy of Contemporary Art (Kyiv) and the Confederation of Designers of Ukraine.

‘My style was radically changed by the war! Destroying the childish illusions of naïve and folk art with its bony hand, it threw me into the sarcastic world of expressionism!’

In 2022, Oksana Fursa began working on a series of works of the war period, known to the world as ‘Rust’. This series has become the most vivid statement of the artist’s talent and creativity, who has created a unique author’s technology of growing natural copper rust on linen canvas, and then using it as a basis for creating retrospective paintings that capture the key moments of Russia’s war with Ukraine.