My name is Mark Gres. I am an artist from Kyiv. A quarter of a century ago, in the year 2000, I held an exhibition tour in the capital and major cities of Ukraine under the title “The Funeral of the Millennium”. After that, I abandoned painting-thinking it was forever.

But then the war came. And with it, an unemployed, lonely seclusion in a remote village, often without electricity, news, or the sound of another human voice. Painting doesn’t require great expenses, and scratching a pen against paper is possible even by the light of a kerosene lamp. Working every day keeps you from going insane.