Painting Lost World, artist Olena Lytka

• Artist: Olena Lytka
• Title: "Lost World"
• Year: 2025
• Size: 100 × 80 cm
• Materials: acrylic and oil on canvas, varnish
• Original hand-painted artwork

"Lost World" belongs to the artist's series "Illusions". It is a horizontal landscape conceived as a view along a river that recedes between two high banks. On the left rises a dark slope covered with forest or brush, on the right a sheer rocky wall with rust and ochre ledges. Between them is a narrow gap in which the water merges with a distant light at the horizon. The lower third of the canvas is taken up by the river's surface with wavering reflections of the banks, the upper part by a light golden sky. There are no people or buildings in the landscape: the viewer seems to stand alone by the water, looking into a passage that leads into the unknown.

The work is painted in acrylic and oil and finished with varnish. The artist pays special attention to texture: the surface of the sky and water is covered with a fine raised network resembling craquelure or crumpled thin paper, and light falls differently in these folds. The banks are painted softly, without sharp outlines: the paint runs down in vertical drips, so that the trees and rocks look blurred, as if seen through fog or a veil of rain. The reflections in the water are laid in with horizontal drags and dissolve smoothly into the bright surface. This combination of flowing drips and dry relief texture gives the painting the feel of an old photograph or a memory.

The palette is restrained and warm: golden ochre, sand and honey tones of the sky and water sit next to the deep brown, olive and almost black masses of the banks. Individual strokes of rust, amber and dull gold light up on the slopes like the last rays on stone. The light in the painting comes from the depth, from that very gap between the banks, and gradually fades towards the edges. The atmosphere is quiet, meditative and slightly uneasy: the world on the canvas looks both real and elusive, like a place that is hard to find again.

Olena Lytka (artistic pseudonym LIBER-TY) is a Ukrainian painter from Dnipro. She is self-taught: after twenty years in another field she devoted herself fully to art and develops her method through constant experiments with material, colour and form. Landscapes on the edge of reality and fantasy are central to her work, and in January 2026 her solo exhibition "Illusions" was held at the Dnipro House of Arts.

The 100 × 80 cm format suits a living room, a spacious study or a meeting room, where the painting needs a calm wall without bright objects nearby. Its warm golden-brown palette goes well with loft-style interiors, natural wood, leather, brass and graphite or beige walls. The textured surface benefits especially from side lighting. The work will make a fine gift for a man, a business partner or a lover of contemplative landscape painting; it comes with a certificate of authenticity.