Marina Sholkova
My work moves between painting, botanical sculpture, illustration, and the Japanese art of ikebana, weaving together nature’s quiet poetry and the hidden depths of the human soul. Each piece begins with a concept — often a single symbol — that I translate into a visual language layered with meaning. Butterfly draws its concept from Ray Bradbury’s short story A Sound of Thunder, where a single misstep transforms the entire course of history. In my work, the luminous green-gold butterfly lies crushed under the print of a safari boot, surrounded by fragments of advertising slogans from the fictional time-travel company — shown both before and after the fateful journey. This shift from order to distortion, with misspelled words and altered names, becomes a visual metaphor for the butterfly effect. The piece reflects on how small, seemingly insignificant actions can unravel the delicate threads of our reality. Through the stark contrast between beauty and destruction, Butterfly becomes a meditation on fragility — not only of life, but of history itself. It invites the viewer to consider how easily the world we know can change forever. Like El Greco’s figures, which stretch beyond the confines of their time and place, the butterfly reaches toward something unseen — a frequency of hope, an opening to the infinite. Through this work, I invite the viewer to pause, to feel, and perhaps to glimpse the moment of becoming.
Title: Butterfly. Medium: Acrylic, texture paste, decorative gold leaf, acrylic marker. Size: 30 × 20 × 1,8 cm. Year: 2022
