World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 512, Natalia Olhova

World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 512, Natalia Olhova

Natalia Olhova, a spontaneous young lady with red hair from Ukraine, shows me her big canvas ‘Echoes of the Sea’ at the exhibition Nieuwe Impuls of the KunstWerkt foundation. It is a large canvas with two young ladies with long hair in blue (and a little yellow, purple, and green), where one young lady is slightly hidden behind the other, interspersed with birds, the sea, and gold and silver glitter. This work symbolizes summer, capturing the feeling of warmth, freedom, and the endless horizon of the sea.

Opposite and next to it are nice abstract works dedicated to the other seasons – winter, autumn, and spring. The large canvas with the ladies she had first made in red, she says. She shows it on her phone. It was made in Crimea in the summer of 2019, but she was not satisfied with it, especially because of the political situation in Crimea, which was already deteriorating. She intended to paint it again when she felt more free. “I’ll make it again when I’m happy in the Netherlands.” In August 2024 it was time. She finished ‘Echoes of the sea’ in two evenings.

A real art family

Natalia comes from Sevastopol, the port city on the Black Sea. She comes from a real art family, she says. Her father, Vladimir Nikolaevich Olhov, is a renowned painter with a broad artistic range. He is a passionate landscape artist and also specializes in painting icons according to traditional canons, as well as creating murals in churches. Natalia attended art school before continuing her education at the esteemed Crimean Republican Higher Educational Institution ‘Art College named after N.S. Samokish’, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in graphic art. But she learned most from her father. “He always gave advice, he also has a lot of (art)books. He always gave tips. I never got full credit, it could always be better. The best students from Crimea went to him for lessons.”

She immersed herself in making landscapes and portraits of people. She did her utmost. In the morning at 5 o’clock, she started painting, then she went to Art College, and after classes, from 19:00 to 22:00, she continued painting. She shows a work in which we see her busy, with the bed in the foreground, then the easel and her as a painter and the windows of her bedroom / study. “My father felt that I had talent.”

Can I make a living from it? she wondered. She asked everyone she knew—classmates, teachers, and established artists—about how to make a living from art. She attended artist gatherings and events, eager to learn how the art world functioned and how to sell her work. She started selling her works more frequently, which allowed her to gradually increase her prices.

To the Netherlands

In 2019, Natalia’s husband left for the Netherlands to study for his second master’s degree at Erasmus University, while she remained in Crimea, trying to continue her artistic career. However, the atmosphere was steadily worsening. Restrictions on artists were tightening, and working freely was becoming more difficult.

In an effort to hold on to her creative space, she rented a studio with her artist friend. But the pressure from authorities and the growing hostility around them made it clear that creating art in such an environment was no longer possible.

So when her husband finally secured a job in the Netherlands, Natalia packed four large suitcases with her artwork and left to start a new life there. Eight months later, the war began.

Trying to become an artist again

It wasn’t easy in the beginning. She had to learn Dutch, but that was step two, first her English had to improve. Slowly she dared to communicate in English. It went better and better ‘This country loves me’, she thought, ‘I want to give something back’.

She felt she had a break in her art. She had always had a freer style than her fellow painters. “I understood why I do my art. I looked at my art with fresh eyes.” She had to earn money and had a job in the game industry for a while and then she could start as a painter and designer at Delft Blue Company De Porceleyne Fles. After 6 months she quit there. “You are too talented” she was told.

She got in touch with a gallery, Galerie Artishock in Rijswijk who invited her to show her work. There she heard that KunstWerkt in Schiedam would also like to welcome new faces. She participated in the Summer Expo 2024 at KunstWerkt and now again, at the new members exhibition in 2025.

She decided to register as a freelancer with the Chamber of Commerce. That was on November 1, 2024. “Then I would start selling my art online.” She did indeed sell, among other things, a self-portrait, of which she donated part of the proceeds to Ukraine.

How would she describe the theme of her work?

For Natalia Olhova, art is a way to celebrate life in all its complexity. “There is light and shadow in everything,” she says. “But instead of seeing them as opposites, I see them as parts of a whole.” Her work explores this idea of duality—how joy and sorrow, hope and uncertainty, strength and vulnerability exist together, shaping our experiences. But rather than focusing on struggle, she chooses to seek harmony.

Her series ‘To Make Friends with the Abyss’ embodies this philosophy. “Happiness is a choice,” Natalia explains. “It’s not about waiting for the perfect moment—it’s about seeing the light, even in the deepest depths.” Her paintings are filled with meaning, warmth, and love, offering a sense of quiet strength and acceptance. “I want my art to remind people that beauty exists in every moment—you just have to be open to it.”

Beyond exploring duality, Natalia also finds inspiration in nature, flowers, and abstract compositions. “Nature has its own rhythm, its own language of balance,” she says. “A single flower can hold as much emotion as a portrait—it can be strong, fragile, fleeting, yet full of life.” Her floral works capture this delicate energy, bringing a sense of lightness and movement to her paintings.

She also works with abstraction, where emotions take form through color and texture. “Abstract art is deeply connected to energy,” Natalia explains. “A painting can completely transform the atmosphere of a space, so it’s important to choose it in harmony with both the environment and the people who live in it.” She enjoys working with oil paints, often incorporating gold and silver pigments to create surfaces that shift and evolve depending on the light. One of her pieces, inspired by the night sky, shimmers differently in the evening, revealing hidden depth with each passing hour.

Landscape painting remains another significant part of her artistic journey. In the summer, she often takes her bike and explores the Netherlands, painting en plein air and later finishing her works in the studio.

Some people describe the Netherlands as gray and muted,” she says. “But to me, in the summer, it’s a land of lush greens, and on cloudy days, it transforms into shimmering silver—dynamic and ever-changing.”

“One the advises of my father: when you paint you have to listen to good music. When I work I have classical music on and also traditional music with recurring mantras.”

Does Natalia have a key work?

She has. One of her significant pieces is ‘Open Up to the World’, created in 2022. It portrays a girl with red hair and blue eyes, emerging as if from a long winter. “She is waking up after the frost, opening herself to warmth, to the sunrise,” Natalia explains. “It’s about stepping into something new, about transformation and light.”

She also presents ‘Selection’, a painting of three women in trench coats with their hair pulled back. “Who is the right figure?” she asks. The interviewer studies the work and points to the woman on the left—her gaze is sharp and focused. “That’s right,” Natalia says with a knowing smile.

Art as a Way of Life

“All my life is art,” Natalia says in conclusion. “I create, I talk about it, I dream about it—it’s simply who I am.”

With the rise of Artificial Intelligence, some question the role of human artists, but Natalia sees it differently. “AI may be able to paint faster, but it will never have what truly matters—the passion, the intention, the soul behind each brushstroke.”

For her, painting is not about trends or expectations but about joy. “I paint because I love it. Because I feel happiest when I bring to life the images that appear in my mind. When I capture the beauty of a moment in a way no one else has seen before.”

Images

1) The Hidden World, 2) painting outside, 3) Selection, 4) Open up to the world, 5) abstraction details, 6) abstraction, 7) first version, 8) Amsterdam 2022, 9) Natalia at work, 10) second version of Echo of the Sea

https://www.nataliaolhova.com/
https://www.instagram.com/artist_sunflower/