Peonia | Black Pink Peony Surreal Figurative Artwork, 2025

Nat Derevyanko  

Nat Derevyanko is a Ukrainian visual artist based in Avezzano, Italy. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including a solo exhibition at Distinction Gallery in Escondido, California, and projects in Italy, Ukraine, and the United States. Her biography is included in the Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine. Derevyanko is a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine and the Union of Designers of Ukraine.

She studied Graphic Design at the Ivan Trush Lviv College of Decorative and Applied Arts and Sacred Art at the Lviv National Academy of Arts. She has worked as a visual artist since 2001 and is a Professor of Design at Khortytsia National Academy in Zaporizhzhia.

Working as a narrative symbolist, Nat explores displacement, vulnerability, belonging, memory, and the loss of home. Her visual language draws on the symbolic structures of sacred art while moving them into psychologically charged contemporary narratives.

Childhood is a recurring lens in her paintings: innocence and imagination coexist with anxiety, early fears, and emotional wounds that persist into adult life. Following the war in Ukraine and her displacement to Italy, the idea of home gained new urgency in her practice. Through symbolic and imaginative imagery, Nat Derevyanko considers how personal memory intersects with collective experience and how vulnerability can become a space for resilience and transformation.