I struggled with this painting more than others. It was ambitious in scale and relied on a technique I had only lightly tested, forcing me to merge unfamiliar processes with older, more reliable ones just to bring it to completion. More difficult, though, was the concern that the subject might be misinterpreted—either by the audience or by my own hand.

What first struck me about the Ukrainian woman was how small she appeared against a vast, hand-cast cement promenade. The artificial shoreline stretched outward with little interruption, creating a barren stage that seemed to dwarf her. In reality, the area was punctuated by Victorian-style lamp posts and industrial structures used for cruise ship traffic, but I removed them in the composition. Their presence diminished the severity of the space, and the painting depended on a purely Liminal space.

What first struck me about the Ukrainian woman was how small she appeared against a vast, hand-cast cement promenade. The artificial shoreline stretched outward with little interruption, creating a barren stage that seemed to dwarf her.

The figure herself was tightly framed, leaving little room to escape the surface around her. She appeared weighed down by remnants of fashion that no longer served her. She was clearly pregnant, yet dressed without any accommodation for it. In one hand she held a designer handbag and a boutique shopping bag; in the other, a cigarette, held in a way more common in the U.S than in Ukraine. Her more practical, faintly wedge-heeled sandals nonetheless looked uncomfortable against her visibly swollen feet.

The cigarette gave me pause. She may have simply been holding it for a someone who had stepped into a shop or bar. More likely, she had stopped smoking briefly when she noticed someone nearby, attempting to avoid being seen with it.

At the time, I found myself wondering—perhaps unfairly—whether she felt the future itself was uncertain, even for her unborn child. But more likely it was a simpler explanation. In 2007, Ukraine was still actively broadcasting warnings about smoking and drinking during pregnancy, much like public campaigns in the United States decades earlier. If her own mother had smoked while pregnant, she may have viewed such warnings as exaggerated. Distrust in government public service announcements would not have been unreasonable either, given a history that included the delayed acknowledgment of Chernobyl’s consequences.

This painting is built from these contrasts: the brief time a pedestrian occupies the space against a permanent, featureless structure. The human form against the engineered, linear abstract promenade. A private moment set within a public, impersonal setting. The meaning is meant to come from juxtaposed contradictions.