63 million views on a single video and more than 81,000 followers on Instagram. Meet Tetiana Cherniavska, the artist behind @cherniavskaart, that suddenly went viral, strangers started saying hello to her on the street. But what happened to her sales? Today she paints soft, pastel abstracts, usually in one sitting and without a sketch. She has come to a simple realization: art thrives without pressure, and without chasing numbers.

“ Being known isn’t that important to me anymore. I want to do the projects I want to do, without pressure, and keep letting my style change.” 

Her ideas often come from the colors themselves. She might sit and think about what she could create with a certain combination, then write down a note or make a quick sketch on her phone. But when it’s time to paint, a sketch almost never guides her. About 99 percent of her work starts without one.

“I look at the canvas and plan the sketch in the air. I decide which part of the painting to start with and which color, and then I see which color goes well with it. Everything gets decided along the way.”

“ Otherwise it gets boring for me. And if it’s boring, I don’t see the point.” 

The road here hasn’t been straight. When Tetiana tried to make a living from selling her work, she felt strong pressure to paint what other people wanted. Her painting is so intuitive and depends so much on her mood that the pressure changed both her style and how the work felt.

During an internship at the gallery Nordic Art Agency, she met successful artists and noticed that almost all of them had something on the side: a design company, a teaching job, another job. That made her rethink things. Today she keeps two kinds of work apart. Through her own company she makes paintings for interiors, for people who want something personal on the wall instead of a print. Then there is her own art, which is free to be whatever it wants.

"When a piece is finished I get really happy and excited. I feel alive. I see the meaning in it, and then nothing else matters."

Many creators dream of a video that takes off and just keeps going. For Tetiana, it happened. One of her Instagram videos has been viewed 63 million times, and she still isn’t quite sure why that one took off.

She had hoped for something like this. It was the reason she spent time on social media in the first place: more people would see her art, and more would want to order a painting. But the first thing that happened was something else entirely.

Lots of people started following her, but few became customers. The views came from people passing through, not from people looking for something to hang on their wall. It’s a reminder that reach and buyers aren’t the same thing, and that a viral video can draw the wrong audience just as easily as the right one.

“ I didn’t sell more paintings. I actually got fewer, because it messed up my algorithm on Instagram.” 

For a long time, portraits were at the center of Tetiana’s art. She drew her inspiration from the Renaissance painters, creating her own interpretations of Venus with the elongated, slightly theatrical poses of Mannerism.

Over the past four months, something new has taken shape. Instead of figures, she paints abstracts. She usually works with strong, vibrant colors, but now her palette has softened into pastels.

" I set up the canvas, gets out my brushes and prepares my palette. I paints with acrylics, which dry quickly and I keep adding to the palette as I work."

Today, once a month, Tetiana hosts workshops, often together with a restaurant or another venue. Participants paint in a simpler, naive style so that everyone can create something beautiful. She works with exhibitions the same way: she brings paintings and live painting, the venue provides food or music, and the result is an event where people come together around art.

Tetiana’s work is now available on Cay Collective!

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Author Natalie Navia