Mariya Golub, *Geode*, 2025, acrylic on canvas, 120 x 120cm (private collection)

In September 2023 I wrote about the art of Mariya Golub (b. 1990, Ukraine) and the feeling of childhood magic and wonder it evokes. The Geode is a recent and powerful work by her that I would very much like to share with you.

Mariya is deeply connected to nature and to all living things. She feels the devastation brought by war at the very core of her spirit and so goes deeper inside herself to connect to that sense of magic without which life has no meaning.

This is what she says about the Geode, and her words are as powerful as her art.

I have found my portal. Yes, it's a real place in real life, and the portal itself brought to the bottom of the soul…
This place has shaken many times from the explosive touches of evil .. And like at the intersection of a rain cloud and a clear sunny sky, a rainbow is formed.. You can find your portal in such places.
What happened to this house, why is it shining from the inside? I dreamed of this house and I was in it. It is an inexplicable state of bliss, the body shining like the sun, the glow incredibly bright, and the feelings beyond words. …
I woke up from my breath, which was like the hiss of a dragon. After that, in reality, butterflies flew into my house, pigeons built a nest on the balcony.
This house will be forever in me, there is something that will forever exist, outside the physical. I wish this paradise would come true in our reality!
I want everyone to get to know their light from within, but probably to do that you have to go through the difficult path of the labyrinth of your own shadows, to kill your "ego".. To be at the crossroads of life and death.. I'm sure many are going through this right now..
Probably it is a great happiness to live without obstacles and to see such things in yourself and others “just like that”.. But “just like that”, it probably doesn't happen because darkness will get in the way.. And yet light without darkness cannot be seen..
We are living stardust..

(Translated from Ukrainian by Google)

Why a “Geode”? Magical, mystical, crystalline, perhaps it is the structure of the world beyond the physical senses.

You can find more of Mariya Golub’s artworks, as well as her poetry, on her FB Page.