Darling, sometimes let go of your dreams, 2025

Dasha Pogodina   Best sellers Emerging artists

This work addresses one of the most delicate and mature emotional states — the moment a person decides to let go of a dream. It is not about giving up or losing, but rather about an inner act of growth, filled with quiet dignity. At the center is a figure holding onto one bird, while another is already being released. Visually, this subtle tension between holding and letting go is conveyed through posture, gaze, and the surrounding landscape — painted in soft, evening tones that evoke a feeling of farewell, but not sorrow.

The scene is filled with gentle melancholy and the light of acceptance. It speaks of a freedom that arrives not when everything works out, but when one can stop clinging. It is about a shift in perspective: when something you once longed for is no longer your truth. And you — not because you gave up, but because you evolved — choose a life without that dream. It is precisely in this moment of calm and readiness to release that a new path begins. And in that place of peace, one becomes closer to oneself.

The painting invites the viewer to pause and ask: which dreams am I still holding onto, even if they no longer lead me forward? And do I have the strength to admit it's time to let go?

PERICHORESIS SERIES 

“Perichoresis" (ancient Greek περιχώρησις - “interpenetration"), a theological term meaning the mutual penetration of divine parts into each other, to describe a unique union that does not imply mixing or merging, but emphasizes an indivisible unity.

Daria explores the theme of new sexuality, deliberately choosing a term from theological treatises for her series of works.

With this gesture, she protests against the dictates of religion, the church's manipulation and pessimization of human sexual manifestations and physicality, the false meanings and concepts with which religions have burdened, and instead of building true connections and bridges for man and God, they build walls.

“Perichoresis" for her is a beautiful and complex term that describes the fusion of the divine and the material. Having grown up in the Protestant tradition within an Orthodox society, Daria notes the common separation of sexuality from divinity in all these religions, while she sees sexuality as the clearest manifestation of divinity, beauty, and sublimity.

The artist notes that Christian culture has invested the image of the female body with a narrative of pornographic tension, while at the same time presenting paradise before the Fall as a sexual paradise, the Garden of earthly pleasures. For the artist, sexual paradise is a safe environment, complete trust, acceptance, the opportunity to open up and discover the Other, the opportunity to learn to be loved and to love.

Love is an environment where merging does not dissolve in another person, but on the contrary, strengthens the individuality of each and enriches each other.

Thus, the artist reminds that the division into the sublime and the low in love is artificial, and overcoming this division can make life more beautiful. The heroes of her paintings are immersed in the enigmatic space of love, and sometimes there are ironic scenes that balance the degree of sublimity.