Mila Chyżawska

Mila Chyzhavska was born in 1986 in Bila Tserkva, a small town located in the Kyiv region of central Ukraine. Her passion for painting developed during her childhood. In 2000, she graduated from the State Art School in her hometown.

She began her higher education at the Faculty of Document Studies and Information Activity at the Kyiv University of Culture, where she earned her master's degree in 2008. From 2008 to 2011, she continued studying painting through private lessons conducted by lecturers from the Kyiv Academy of Fine Arts.

In 2014, Mila Chyzhavska moved to Poland with her husband, Denis. In 2018, she started her studies at the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, which she completed with the highest distinction in June 2023. Her thesis supervisor was Prof. Maciej Świeszewski, and her annex supervisor was Prof. Maria Targońska.

Mila Chyzhavska has been awarded the Gdańsk City Cultural Scholarship twice: in 2022 for the project “People of the Sea” and in 2023 for the series “Sunflowers.” As part of this series, she created a monumental drawing titled “Sunflower Field,” made with charcoal on paper with impressive dimensions—10 meters in length and 1.5 meters in height, resulting in a total area of 15 square meters.

Artistic Vision:
Mila Chyzhavska’s work is closely connected to her Ukrainian heritage and her fascination with nature. She grew up in a rural environment where she had the opportunity to observe vast natural landscapes, including sunflower fields, which often became the subjects of her plein air painting sessions. For several years, she has focused on the motifs of grasses and sunflowers, appreciating their diversity of shapes and colors.

In her art, sunflowers take on additional meaning in the context of the war in Ukraine. As the artist admits, the subject is terrifyingly difficult, but she feels a deep need to speak about it through her art. In her works, the sunflower becomes a symbol of struggle, courage, determination, and the indomitable spirit of the Ukrainian nation. Since the beginning of the military aggression against Ukraine in 2014, this motif has gained new, profound meanings associated with battlefields, blood, effort, and heroism in defending life, home, family, and homeland.