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by mia hadjigeorgiou
Though she may have only been in the UK since October 2022, Ukrainian refugee and graphic artist Natalia Kolpakova is already making a name for herself as an award-winning creative talent with unique design ideas…
Originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, Natalia first came to the UK with her young daughter at the end of 2022, following the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, which forced Natalia and thousands of others to flee West.
Natalia said, “When the news of the Russian invasion came, I literally froze- it was hard to believe that what was happening was real. Friends and acquaintances from all over the world started calling us and inviting us to visit them, but for a while, we believed that everything would soon be over”.
She continued, “We lived near a TV tower in Kyiv. And when a rocket exploded next to it and people died, we stopped hesitating and went to the West”.
After applying to the Reset Ukraine program, Natalia and her now-11-year-old daughter were fortunate enough to be placed with a host family, and currently they live in Falmouth under the temporary protection of the Home for Ukraine program.
Adapting to life in the UK hasn’t been too hard for Natalia and her daughter, but she did joke about having to come to terms with all our various types of rain: “For us, the main challenge was adapting to all types of rain, but we soon learned the differences between mizzle-drizzle and spitting and spotting, showers and storms.”
On a more positive note, though, she did admit that the UK rain is in fact good for promoting artistic creativity, and perhaps that’s why England is “so rich in inventions, literature and music”.
Since she was a child, Natalia was surrounded by art – largely due to her grandfather’s interest in collecting various paintings, albums, and antiques – and despite having to flee thousands of miles for safety, Natalia has not stopped creating beautiful graphic designs.
She has a wealth of formal art training, having attended “Kyiv Academy of Arts and Crafts named after Mikhail Boychuk” and also [having] “graduated from the Graphic faculty of NTUU ‘KPI’”.
Having then also completed artwork for various advertising companies, book publishers, magazines, and even television networks, Natalia has developed a breadth of knowledge away from her formal art training as well.
As a result, Natalia said that she tries to recognise the importance of both formal and informal art training, careful to not be snobbish about those who may not have studied art at an academy like she did.
Now, Natalia enjoys hosting solo exhibitions of her artwork, using a plethora of materials, including “ceramic sculpture[s], interior objects, graphics on tableware, textiles and silk”.
Her favourite piece is one of her silk paintings which “began with the graphic series ‘PLAYERS’”; it was conceptualised “one warm summer evening in [a] garden gazebo, [with] a group of friends [who] were having fun cooking dinner over a fire and playing board games”.
She said that “the light of the full moon, the fire and a small lamp snatched faces changed by excitement from the darkness”, which then gave her a visualisation for the first few images of the piece, and the idea to explore the nature of games and excitement through art.
Natalia’s work has now won too many awards to count or name, a huge honour being the wins she achieved at the 16th International Design Awards in three categories: “Gold in the Print/Advertisement category, Silver in the Multimedia Social Campaign category, and Bronze in the Accessories category”.
However, albeit impressive, Natalia admitted that the biggest achievement for her personally was the solo exhibition, Timeless, which she hosted for the United Nations in October 2018 as a part of the Days of Ukraine.
She said, “Probably the most striking of all was the solo show at the UN in Vienna – it was before the war and everything that was happening was very inspiring”.
Currently, Natalia has no definite shows / exhibitions booked in for 2025, but she aims to continue doing what she loves, “see it develop successfully and travel”.
When asked what the hardest part of being an artist is, Natalia said that for her, it was finding her niche.
And finally, when asked for advice she’d give to any young person trying to break into the world of professional art, Natalia said that “being an artist is a lifestyle that requires a lot of self-organization and discipline- think about how much you need all of this”.
