Victoria Berezka is a Ukrainian artist working in the technique of encaustics. She also writes poems, fairy tales and stage plays. For several years she worked as a radio journalist, created art-focused radio programs, and also managed her own amateur theater. She got education as a cultural and educational professional and theater director at the Kharkiv State Academy of Arts (Ukraine) in 1991. She has been drawing since childhood, but became interested in encaustics in 2013. She draws mental images in miniature picture format (A5, A6). The artist was very surprised when connoisseurs of her artworks began to recognize there places they had seen in reality: Avacha Hill, a view of Fujiyama, agave fields in Mexico and more.
Encaustic is the art of painting with molten wax. It has been known since ancient times: already ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans mastered this technique. Nowadaysthe technology has been renovated. Modern artists use an ordinary electric iron withunperforated sole plate as a brush. They melt a piece of wax pastel on iron sole surface and smooth it over chalk paper or cardboard. Some combine several colors at once, their imprint isunpredictable. It is meditation rather than conscious drawing. Each artwork is unique and unrepeatable; it can neither be copied nor corrected. Any attempt to correct an unsuccessful stroke leads to complete change of the image. Therefore, every artwork must be carefully preserved: it is as vulnerable to rudeness as the human soul. It is good to have such an artwork in some eye-catching place:then you can relax your soul, contemplating the subtle nuances left by the invisible Spirit whom the artist was contacting when leaving on the cardboard prints of an ordinary electric iron.
