Artist Statement

Alla Broeksmit, born in Ukraine, lives and works
between London, New York, and Maine.

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My paintings in oil and pigment on canvas come from a leap of faith, a dreamlike process. Symbols central to my Russian / Ukrainian heritage and coded references to family and personal loss, covered and disclosed through painterly brushwork, combine to create a visionary world that reveals itself to me. Each painting is a surprising journey, a visual manifestation that mirrors my interiority—my spirit and experience.

Memories include the golden domes of Saint Sophia’s Cathedral in Kyiv, the metallic foliage of the Secession Building in Vienna, and the placid calm of Monet’s garden in Giverny. These remembered visions are woven with contemporary observations to create expressive, spiritual compositions, a dialogue between past and present across imaginary landscapes. The ghostlike images appear and disappear as though in a liminal space.

I mix my own pigments and apply them in layers, experimenting with the viscosity and texture of the paint, employing colors that evoke the faded appearance of the frescoes I vividly remember seeing in my childhood. The repetition in my work is inspired by chanting, an ancient practice that crosses Eastern and Western cultures, reflecting aspects of the visual memories that make up my narrative, with the multi-paneled works emulating the iteration of panels in Eastern Orthodox altarpieces.

I find inspiration in a line from The Elixir by the 17th-century metaphysical poet George Herbert: “A man that looks on glass, On it may stay his eye; Or if he pleaseth, through it pass, And then the heaven espy.”