“Documenting Landscapes: Ukraine’s Vanishing Terrain” draws us into a distant world: stunning, serene, natural Ukraine, circa 2019-2022. With lush hues and broad brush strokes, painter Jarolsav Leonets transports us from his country’s daily destruction to the bucolic, brilliant expanse once defining its topography. The Kyiv-based artist reached out to us two years ago as he was crossing his country to capture iconic vistas, some soon ravaged by Russia’s invasion. We, and he, wanted this important collection of work to have a wide and thoughtful audience and to lead the opening of our new, expanded gallery. His paintings arrived after a very long ground transport through a no-fly zone into Poland and an even longer journey from Warsaw to Washington. With paint, brushes and linen in short supply, Leonet puts us with the lone bicyclist, miniscule on a giant cliff bathed in color and light; in the field with the wind whipping through the trees; along the riverbend at the edge of day. Removed from their original stretchers for transport, and paint still sticky, nine paintings arrived in a roll. Some canvases have pinholes (we’ve examined them with our top notch framer, and deemed them safe for re-stretching and long-term framing). The paintings are unmistakably from a war zone. From Kharkiv to Zaporizhzhia, Leonets urgently traversed his homeland, painting dramatic cliffs, never-ending fields and wide rivers threatened by Russia’s invasion. “I don't understand this war, I don't understand why to kill people and destroy the destinies of an entire generation.” At each stop Leonets sketched and painted to memorialize a place in a “peaceful and free country, which is joyful, which is beautiful.” We included the narratives and retrospectives we asked him to write for each piece. Jaroslav Leonets is an award-winning artist highly prized in Ukraine, with residencies, public installations, and exhibitions, including the Institute of Contemporary Art in Kyiv. He graduated from the Kharkiv Art College in easel painting and earned an MA in monumental painting at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture. This is his Washington, DC debut. "My name is Yaroslav Leonets and I’m a modern artist from Ukraine. A few words about me and my life. A terrible and cruel war is going on in Ukraine now. I don’t understand this war, I don’t understand why people destroy the destinies of an entire generation. Thousands of people are fleeing this war, thousands are dying. Before the war, I managed to visit all regions of Ukraine, in some I lived longer, in some I came to create new works. For me, all of Ukraine is associated with my own home. I live in Kyiv, despite shelling and blackouts; the mobile connection and the Internet disappear, but this is not so important. I don’t know how it is not to be an artist when there is so much beauty around. I live and work while there is such an opportunity and while I am alive. Ukraine is my home."