This work began as a sketch made long ago, but recent events in Ukraine led me back to it with renewed meaning. I felt a strong need to create something that reconnects me to home and carries a sense of hope. Returning to my earlier drawings, I completed this piece with new attention and care, allowing past ideas to meet present emotions.

The composition brings together elements drawn from traditional Ukrainian interiors, clothing, utensils, and décor – details that belong to everyday life and lived experience. These familiar references hold memory and continuity. Fragmented forms reflect disruption and uncertainty, while recurring colors and rhythmic patterns offer grounding and stability.

For me, hope appears in this balance between change and continuity. It lives in preserving cultural memory through the act of making, especially when physical closeness to home is no longer the same. By working with tradition and personalmemory, this piece becomes a quiet affirmation that connection can endure, and that creative practice itself can be a way to hold onto hope.

This work developed through long-term research into traditional Ukrainian interiors across different regions and was completed during a period when reconnecting with home felt especially important. The process allowed earlier research to take on new emotional depth.

While working on it, I focused on Hutsul interiors and folk art, drawn to their strong colour relationships and layered decorative details. Translating these qualities into an interior space helped me create a sense of structure, density, and visual order. The composition feels contained and steady, offering a quiet sense of balance.

This work is shaped by my knowledge of traditional interiors from the Polissia region, where I was born. At its center is the Poliska pich – the traditional stove – often understood as the heart of the home. For me, it is deeply personal. I still remember my grandmother’s oven, where warm, fragrant food filled the house and everyday life gathered around its heat.

Surrounding forms and folk motifs suggest shared living, care, and closeness. The composition reflects how domestic spaces hold emotional as well as practical meaning. These interiors are places of connection, routine, and mutual support.