Diana Yevtukh is an artist from Ukraine who makes beautiful embroidery pieces and puts them inside burned trees or hollow spaces. Her brightly colored embroidered pieces pop out of holes in trees or rocks, making them look more alive.
The vivid embroideries appear to offer a ray of hope in the midst of dreary surroundings. “An empty area on the tree finds me first – I start to feel that something that belongs to a location was left out, and then I collect measurements and start doing the needlework,” Diana says in an interview.
Diana has been making these embroideries for nearly four years. “I walk a lot every day,” she telling me that, “and this is a very wonderful, shining time of my day.” Every day, I attempt to walk at least 7 kilometers, preferably more. During my winter walks in 2018, I began to notice the empty areas in the bark of the trees I saw near sidewalks every day.”
“I saw them as scars, but also as an empty space that needs a statement to fill it. These ideas have been traveling around in my head for months, and it’s clear that they’ve met up with my embroidery ideas,” she said.
“I was trying out different ways to put my ideas into action, like watercolor and oil paintings, fluid acrylics, and now with embroidery which will soon be in it’s sucessful fifth year. She said, “I like working with natural materials like cotton fibers and threads.”
Diana says, “I am absolutely in love with the process of making embroidery: although it is long and very arduous, one work might take 2 to 6 months of daily effort, but the hours spent with the thread and the needle are priceless.” “Especially warm, pleasant, and calm.”
“Embroidery is the most comfortable form of art I’ve tried so far. In the last four years, I’ve tried to go without embroidery for a few weeks at most. “In my heart, embroidery always beats other forms of art,” the artist said.
The artist said this about the effects of the Russian invasion this year: “The first four months were the worst. Fear, pain, and hopelessness are hard to put into words. Every day, Russian rockets fell all over the country. Many of them landed in Lviv, where I live and work. Every other day, air raid sirens broke up the peace on the city streets. Embroidery was the only thing that helped me get through this strange, almost end-of-the-world-like pain. The west of the country is a little bit calmer now, especially since the Ukrainian counteroffensive has been so successful at pushing invaders out of the country.
“Still I can’t stop feeling the suffering of my fellow Ukranians in cities closer to the frontline and under occupation – the pain and the terror Russians have brought on our land is beyond comprehensible. The war made me to seek the purpose of civilian living in a warzone setting, so I remade,” she added.