ARTIST STATEMENT
I am an artist in the San Francisco Bay Area. In my work I try to combine a love for color with a skill for observation, as well as years of training in classical drawing and human anatomy. My fascination with people, gestures and facial expressions comes from my background as a character animator.
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In my work over the past couple of years, I focused on people in urban landscape. In my paintings I try to tell a story with just a few brush strokes, capturing an instance and depicting every person as a small puzzle piece in the life of a city. I want the viewer to wonder: Who are these people? Where are they going? What is on their mind and what was their day like?
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ABOUT MILA
Mila was born and raised in Ukraine. After arriving in California around the year 2000 (by the way of the Gulf Coast and the Pacific Northwest) she swapped her Masters degree in Sociology and Anthropology for an art education and worked as an animator in film and videogame industries for over 10 years. Oil painting initially was this fun skill she learned in-between animation projects. As time went by, she spent more and more time painting, eventually deciding to take time off from the animation work to pursue her painting career.
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San Francisco became her new home and a constant source of inspiration. Her fascination with people, gestures and facial expressions comes from her background as a character animator. Mila is now a full-time painter. She lives and works in San Francisco Bay area and continues to study with renown local and East Coast artists every chance she gets.
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