Artist sees two meanings in every painting

If you are looking at a painting by Oleg Shuplyak and seeing a pastoral landscape or a couple of dry leaves, look again.

Next time you might see something different as Shuplyak is one of the few artists in Ukraine painting optical illusions.

The artist himself says that his are “pictures with double meaning.” His style is very distinctive: just Google “pictures with double meaning” and scroll down to see paintings with distinctive Ukrainian imagery of villages, houses and portraits of the national bard Taras Shevchenko. They are easily spotted after pages of trash.

Shuplyak says he never thought his pictures would be treated as anything special. “These double-meaning works are kind of a hobby for me,” he says. His main specialty is post-modern art, and he’s a frequent participant of exhibitions featuring this style of works.

Yet Shuplyak’s optical illusions have become an Internet hit as hundreds of his works have made it into many websites and into social networks. Huffington Post and Daily Mail ran stories and online galleries of his pictures.

His Ukrainian colleagues don’t know much about his works, however. His pictures rarely sell for more than $500 and are trashed by the local art critics.

This picture is called I was turning 13, an allusion to a famous poem by Taras Shevchenko, whose face is a part of the painted optical illusion. (Courtesy)

Chief editor of Art Ukraine magazine knows nothing of 45-year-old Shuplyak and his work, but says that “pictures with double meaning even sounds funny.” She says all works of art are supposed to have multiple meanings, and says “it’s a sin to waste space on such things.”
Shuplyak says that other artists have been known to “waste space” in a similar manner.

“There were many outstanding artists who worked in this genre: Italy’s [Giuseppe] Arcimboldo, Spain’s [Salvador] Dali,” he says. “I have always been fascinated by such works, and dreamed to try it myself.”

When I wake up I have no idea what I can create today. I live free and creative and this gives me major happiness,

– Olga Shuplyak

Shuplyak claims to have found his own formula, which is “very simple.” Unlike other famous artists who have worked in this genre, he composes his images in his head, without arranging and rearranging still objects to take inspiration from.

His first picture was inspired by Ukraine’s independence. “Everyone was so inspired by it, including me,” he recalls.

He based his first work on two classical Ukrainian images – a musician playing his kobza, the traditional instrument, in the village of Taras Shevchenko, and the portrait of the latter.

Since then he has created several variations on the Shevchenko theme, but never to a customer’s order. He says working on someone’s commission is pretty typical for artists.

The painting above is called Ptashky (birds). (Courtesy)

“I do a lot of commercial works, classical landscapes or portraits, but it’s just impossible to limn a picture with double meaning to order, ” he says. “The ideas take a long time to nurture – you have to try it first to see how the drawing works out.”

Like Shevchenko, Shuplyak was born in a tiny village. But unlike him, he wasn’t even considered talented enough to be accepted to the art academy. He ended up studying to be an architect, but followed his passion and continued painting.

He still thinks of his pictures with optical illusions as “a fun hobby in surrealist style”, even though he understands that it is something new for Ukraine.

He mostly paints in his attic workshop in the town of Berezhany in Ternopil Oblast, occasionally doing a ramble into the country to paint churches and the like. Like many artists, he believes that his true masterpieces are yet to come.

“When I wake up I have no idea what I can create today. I live free and creative and this gives me major happiness,” he says.

Kyiv Post staff writer Daryna Shevchenko can be reached at [email protected]