Tell Me Stories That Make the World Feel Kinder, 2026

Dasha Pogodina   Best sellers Emerging artists

This artwork is shipped rolled in a protective tube (unstretched) for safe international delivery. The canvas includes an additional 2 inches (5 cm) of material on each side for professional stretching on a wooden frame. The dimensions stated in the listing refer to the final size of the artwork after stretching.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Sometimes, we need stories not to explain the world as it is, but to help us believe in its kindness again.

In this painting, the artist explores the healing power of tenderness, imagination, and trust. A powerful bear, with its sharp claws and teeth, becomes a symbol of protection rather than danger. Resting beside it, the vulnerable female figure finds a space where she no longer needs to defend herself.

The work reflects one of the central ideas of : true intimacy creates a safe space where vulnerability is not a weakness, but an expression of trust. Love does not eliminate the dangers of the outside world, but offers a place where we can temporarily lay down our defenses.

Through the language of fairy tales, the artist reminds us that sometimes being loved means having someone who can make the world feel gentle again.

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.