Painting by Olena Koliesnik

There are dreams that are more frightening than their absence. They are too big, too specific, and require years of work without any guarantee of results. That is why sometimes we run away not from what we fear, but from what we desire the most. This work was born from reflections on the moment when a person stands before his own dream and has to make a choice: to stay safe or to risk everything for the sake of an unknown future. I know this state personally. At a certain point, I left a stable job in a pharmacy and chose the path of art, betting everything on it. It was a movement without guarantees, but with a sense of inner necessity. The blurred background in the work conveys the speed at which the external world loses its clarity. When a person moves at the call of a dream or runs away from it, the usual landmarks stop working, and the space around becomes unstable. This work has no fixed order in the series. I leave it up to the viewer to decide for themselves where they are now: at the beginning of the escape, in motion, or at the moment when they finally allow themselves to approach their own dream. “From Dreams” is a work from the “Escape” section of the “Solomon’s Paradox” series. “Solomon’s Paradox” is a collection of 18 works created at the intersection of psychology, research into survival instincts, and my personal experience of emigration. The series emerged from revelations shared with me on Instagram, and explores the moments when a person’s internal reactions determine their choices. Spain, 2024