Painting Campanula, artist Valentina Olympiiuk-Vinnikova

• Artist: Valentina Olympiiuk-Vinnikova
• Title: "Campanula"
• Year: 2022
• Size: 30 × 40 cm
• Materials: canvas, oil
• Original hand-painted painting

This vertical composition is devoted entirely to a bouquet of bellflowers — campanulas, whose Latin name means "little bell". Flexible stems with blossoms rise from the bottom upward and open out like a fan almost to the full height of the canvas. White, pale blue, mauve and deep violet bells alternate with one another, with one or two delicate pink flowers among them. Some corollas face the viewer, revealing yellow stamens in their depths, while others are shown from the side or from behind. The bouquet does not stand in a vase and is not tied to an interior — it seems to emerge from luminous air, which makes the image light and poetic.

The painting is executed in oil on canvas in a free, expressive manner. The paint is applied in thick impasto strokes, probably with a palette knife or a broad brush: each petal is a separate confident, raised stroke that keeps the trace of the tool. Thin stems and leaves are indicated by quick green lines, and the background is laid in with large planes where one tone partly overlaps another. This technique gives the surface a rich texture and makes the image lively and vibrating. The artist's monogram in a circle is in the lower left corner.

The palette is built on a subtle combination of pastel shades. The background shimmers with peach, pinkish, cream and mint-green tones, against which the rich violet and blue-mauve bells sound especially vivid. The white flowers take on blue and greenish tints, reflecting the surrounding colours. The light seems diffused, morning-like, and the whole work breathes the freshness of early summer. The painting conveys not so much the botanical structure of the flowers as the emotion of encountering them — joy, tenderness and lightness.

Valentina Olympiiuk-Vinnikova was born in 1979 in Makiivka, graduated from the Donetsk Art College and, in 2005, from the easel painting department of the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts. Since 2006 she has been a member of the Kharkiv branch of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine, and floral still lifes are one of the main genres of her work.

The compact 30 × 40 cm format allows "Campanula" to be placed in a bedroom, living room, hallway or on a narrow wall, or combined with other works in a gallery arrangement. The delicate pastel palette goes well with light interiors in Provençal, Scandinavian or modern classic style. The painting will make a touching gift for a woman — a mother, friend or colleague — for a birthday or a spring holiday: a bouquet of bellflowers to delight for many years. The work is unframed.