Between Two Homes: Stories of Artists in Motion
Second series of the "5 Stories" project
About the author
My name is Mariana Volynets. I am the founder of Bloomaris Gallery and the creator of "5 Stories," a series of short interviews with artists from different corners of the world.
For me, Bloomaris is more than a gallery. It's a space of support, dialogue, and growth for those who create and for those who love art. My many years of experience in intellectual property law become an additional strength I bring to artists: I know how to protect not only their works, but the stories that stand behind them.
"5 Stories" is about what lies behind art. Not about the works themselves, but about the people who create them: their doubts, their searching, their fears, and their inspiration. Each series consists of one theme and five different ways of living through it.
This is the second series. The theme: "Between Two Homes."
Introduction
When you change a place, everything changes. Even the air you breathe. The language. The light from the window. The sound of the street. The rhythm of your steps.And yet, creativity still finds its place.
And yet, creativity still finds its place.
Sometimes art becomes an inner home, a space you can carry with you, even when two points appear on the map: two addresses, two lives.
In this series I gathered stories of artists who live in motion. Those for whom home is a process, not a destination. We talk about how a new city sounds in their work, and whether it is possible to belong to two places at once.
These are conversations about roots that grow even through asphalt. About searching for stability within constant change. About a home that grows from within.
Because home is not geography. It is a sense of belonging. And creativity often brings it back.
Olena Koliesnik
🌍 Olena Koliesnik
A multidisciplinary artist, art manager, curator, and art producer for her own projects and for her colleagues. In her practice, Olena explores the theme of transformation as a state that every person experiences, regardless of place or circumstance. Through art she reflects on what is universally human, drawing on her own stories, including the experience of forced emigration to Spain."Within me live thousands of multiplicities that transform endlessly.
"Within me live thousands of multiplicities that transform endlessly. Art is a way of understanding, accepting, and recognizing each transformation. Every person lives through these transformations during their life, regardless of gender, political beliefs, location, and so on. Through art I reflect on what is universally human, even when I draw from my own stories.
I keep creating because it is a way for me and for others to see something good.
It was precisely through my forced emigration to Spain that I recognized: rebirth is a theme I have been meeting throughout my whole life, and it is already present in my work. I belong to many places and stories at once, but I begin with myself."
Alistair Cooke
🌍 Alistair Cooke
A British-born artist who found his creative voice later in life and now calls Spain his home. Alistair works in a vivid, contemporary style, blending abstract forms, geometric patterns, and expressive portraits. His pieces are both visually striking and emotionally engaging.
"Art, for me, is a space of escape and freedom. I consider myself a positive person from a time before social media and AI became a beacon in our lives. Creativity is a way to build my own world and my own friends, working with my mind and heart. It's a human skill I refuse to give up: learning, understanding, growth.
My images are never fully planned: there is only an initial idea, which over time grows into something unexpected. I work with the layering of pastels, using it as a way to change reality. In my works, I aim for the moment when the viewer feels as if they are being looked at in return. That's the effect I try to achieve.
Living between countries has become an important part of my artistic language. I lived in the Netherlands for a long time and studied at the art academy in The Hague, shaped by the Dutch school. Moving to Spain changed my perspective: the warm climate, the light, the culture, and the openness of people offered a new viewpoint. The contrast between the Northern European environment and sunny Spain brought more joy into my life, and I hope that feeling is reflected in my works."
Tetiana Tretiakova
🌍 Tetiana Tretiakova
A Ukrainian artist, born in Kharkiv and currently living in Warsaw. She works with important social themes through personal resonance and deep emotional engagement. Her works are held in private collections in Ukraine, Spain, Poland, Germany, and Croatia.
"With the beginning of the war, my sense of time changed. «Before», there was a sense of safety, and no matter how old I was, I always thought, «when I grow up…», it felt as if I had a whole life ahead of me, so many attempts and possibilities. «After», came the realization that even tomorrow may not come, and everything I had planned for decades ahead had to be compressed into months, weeks, or even days.
Before the war, art was a hobby for me, where aesthetics came first. Meanings and significance began to appear in my paintings closer to the war, alongside the rising tension around. Art became one of the key pillars of support that helped me then and still helps me endure the present reality, where you hang between past and present, with hope for the future.
The main reason I create art now is to emphasize that, although the past cannot be changed, we can learn not to let traumatic events destroy our future. That is why my art has begun to sound bolder and more confident. From the first days of the war, the colour red appeared in my paintings and over time became dominant. It became, for me, a manifesto of the desire to live, present in each of my works, regardless of the themes I work with.My artistic focus right now is dedicated to the theme of corporeality, which originally emerged from the themes of violence and post-traumatic stress disorder I had worked with before. Creating the new series «Madness» became a kind of therapy for me, allowing me to live through emotions that my subconscious had blocked.
My artistic focus right now is dedicated to the theme of corporeality, which originally emerged from the themes of violence and post-traumatic stress disorder I had worked with before. Creating the new series «Madness» became a kind of therapy for me, allowing me to live through emotions that my subconscious had blocked.
In my art projects there is never only one place. Home is present in every image. It seems to me that wherever I am, the themes that will sound first within me will still be the ones connected to home.
In response to whether it is possible to belong to two places at once, Tetiana answered through her art project "Two Suns," dedicated to the experience of forced immigration:
"One sun stayed back home, the other shines here, in forced immigration. They are connected by birds, which link my past and present. At home I often walked in the park. It was my special ritual: to begin the morning with a walk, regardless of weather or circumstance. Now, far from home, I repeat this ritual. The local park becomes my personal portal into the past, because this tradition came with me from home.
Sometimes it feels as if these birds are the invisible threads weaving my life together, joining its torn parts. They become symbols of stability amid change and chaos. In many cultures, ravens have long been given mystical meaning. They seem to unite the heavenly and the earthly, the past and the present. That is why they appear in my project, embodying the journey of my soul between past and present, in dreams and in reality.
Each such journey is a step toward myself, toward understanding who I am now. I myself feel like a bird for whom time stops being linear and the impossible becomes possible. I don't know where this path leads, but I trust myself and take the next step toward the future."
Maria Hamberg
🌍 Maria Hamberg
A Swedish abstract artist. In her practice she blends Nordic calm with Latin energy, creating works that move between stillness and motion.
"The phrase 'wherever I lay my hat, that's my home' has always stayed with me. I grew up between Latin America and Sweden, and I learned early to feel at home wherever I am, because the one constant I carry is myself. That is my true place of belonging.
It lives in my art too, where Nordic calm meets my Latin soul. Two countries, two tempos exist within me, and my paintings grow in the tension between them.
My process is intuitive. I follow the flow and allow the painting to become what it is meant to be.
When I paint, the question of being between homes disappears. I simply am. Outside of that state, home becomes a place to rest and recharge.
At the end of the day, home is a feeling you make your own."
Audrey Dananai
🌍 Audrey Dananai
A Zimbabwean fine artist. Her practice has been present since early childhood, supported by her parents and shaped through education and life experience. Audrey does not work within a fixed medium. She moves between paint, clay, found objects and soil, allowing whatever feels right in her hands to help her understand what she is feeling. For her, art becomes a mirror, a way to slowly process emotions through time.
"Being between two homes is a process of change where you break, transform, or let go of parts of yourself. I feel that over time I have lost certain traits of my character, but I have also gained new ones. Some qualities I used to hold onto now feel unnecessary.
Change is not always visible at first. It happens while you are still inside it, until one day you realize you are no longer the same person. You think you are still in an older version of yourself, when in fact you have already moved beyond it.
You can still go back and look at who you used to be, and understand how far you have come.
I am starting to believe my home is in my mind. Everywhere else feels like an experience I allow myself to have."
The expert view: closing the series
Five stories. Five artists. Five different experiences of life between spaces, countries, and inner states.
In this series, artists from different countries spoke about a single feeling: what it is like to be between two homes, when home stops being only a place and becomes an inner state.
Today I want to look at this theme from a wider perspective, through a voice that sounds in music. That is why I invited Gezweirdo, a Ukrainian singer and songwriter. Her song "Where Is My Home" echoes this series with remarkable precision. It is about searching for home not as a physical place but as an inner state, one that changes alongside our experience, time, and who we become.
I asked her three questions.
How does the word "home" sound to you today?
"Today the word «home» sounds very different to me. It feels more figurative… and, honestly, painful. But over time, the signs of home keep multiplying. It's like a molecule that constantly changes, but its essence remains.
Right now part of my family is far away, my friends are scattered around the world, and that is what made me search for new signs of home. It feels like a moment of growing up, because you look for support within yourself.
And the further I go, the more I realize that, at this moment, it is about the inner support I am learning to build."
Can home be an inner feeling that changes together with us?
"I think home can definitely be an inner feeling. And it really does change along with you.
Because when you are constantly between «here» and «there», you don't always have time to live through it deeply, you just adapt. Like: okay, another day, another change, let's keep moving.
And at the same time I notice that I still remain somewhere in the centre of all of it. And this sense of myself has become different, but probably even stronger. So for me, home is not something static. It is more of a process that changes together with me."
How does the song "Where Is My Home?" sound to you today, in the context of your own experience?
"Right now my song «Where Is My Home» sounds very honest to me, sometimes painful, but there is also strength in it: the strength to accept change and to move toward something new.
What's interesting is that when I was writing it, I didn't fully understand what it was about. I just wrote from the feeling that I had something to say. Later I realized that there was a lot of my inner pain in it. And, as it turned out, not only mine, because it resonated with everyone who had been forced to leave or had lost their home, who also had to adapt to new changes.
And I think this song is about trying to live through that pain and turn it into something stronger. Because it doesn't sound as if everything is bad. On the contrary. It gives strength to open up to a new life, despite the difficulties.
And the question in it is still open. I just look at it differently now."
In closing
Five artists. Five different geographies. Five different ways to answer one question: where does your home really live?
Alistair finds it in the new light of the Spanish sun. Tetiana carries it with her through morning walks and the symbol of birds. Olena begins it with herself. Maria turns it into a feeling that belongs only to her. Audrey finds it in her own mind. And Gezweirdo sings about it as a question whose answer comes not in words, but in the inner support you learn to build yourself.
There is no single answer between them. But there is something they share: home moves from space into state. From address into feeling. From geography into an inner quietness that the artist learns to carry within.
Perhaps that is why creativity is so often born on the road. It becomes the first home that does not stay behind.
Thank you to each of the artists who entrusted me with their stories. Ahead are new series of "5 Stories" with new themes. If you create, and would like to take part, your voice could become one of the next five.
Mariana Volynets, founder of Bloomaris