OLENA TOLSTOKORA

Art that takes you back to childhood

You know those drawings you made when you were little where everything made complete sense to you and absolutely no sense to anyone else?

Olena Tolstokora’s work has a little bit of that feeling.

Her world is full of flowers, animals, tiny people, handwritten sentences and characters that look like they might have escaped from an old children’s book. Some are funny. Some are a little creepy. Some make you weirdly emotional without giving you a particularly good reason why.

Tolstokora, who works under the name Bravebirdie, was born in Kharkiv and is now based in Vancouver. Her work moves between painting, drawing and digital art, with childhood, Ukraine, displacement and memory appearing throughout it.

But you don’t really need to know any of that before looking at it.

That’s probably our favourite thing about her work.

It doesn’t feel like something you’re supposed to stand in front of and pretend to understand. You look at it and immediately start making your own associations.

A drawing reminds you of a book you had when you were seven. A character looks like somebody you know. A sentence feels strangely familiar.

It’s nostalgic without being overly sweet about it.

Basically, art we’d actually want on our walls.

GLOW AFTER / ART

THE GLOW LIST / 02

@bravebirdie

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