Ivan Blagorenko

I was inspired from an early age by the masterpieces found in the world’s greatest museums. Their beauty, history, and enduring power left a lasting impression on me. Since then, art has been an essential part of my life, shaping how I see, experience, and connect with the world.

I am drawn to the moment a place stops being scenery and becomes particular: the half hour when low sun separates one aspen trunk from the next, or when snow stops being white.

I work from that interval. The paintings are less a record of where I stood than of what the light was doing while I stood there.

The subjects recur: aspen groves, high meadows, the dark margin of conifers along a ridge, water under a changing sky. They recur because they are never twice the same. Utah is home; I spend a considerable part of each year away from it, and the country I travel through reaches the work soon afterward.