Sarah Svetlana

Sarah Svetlana is an abstract painter who explores the fragmentation of the subject in an ongoing search for home. An agency model turned art model, Svetlana used her body as the first medium in her initial search for identity and self-expression—her upbringing in the irreconcilable cultures of Soviet Belarus and Immigrant America, has drawn and painted roadmaps between two worlds. 

A refugee child from the Soviet Union, she grew up in Los Angeles. Her constant search for identity has always been her drive to create. Always observing, noticing the smallest detail within a detail, her paintings do not only suggest hectic movement, but the stillness locked in each gesture of that movement. 

Her work is “rooted somewhere between the insanity of Wassily Kandinsky and the line-certainty of the early 20th century Futurists." Each painting is a piece to the complex topography that defines both her identity and her work. Through the narratives created by a methodical application of color, she delivers an invocation of home—spectral and surreal, but familiar too.

“Perfection is boring. The colors I choose I take from my childhood. The bright palette and shapes soothe my soul, and each line, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, is a vital moment, an emotion, suspended in time."