Soledar: Salt of Earth (Other Worlds pt. XXXIV)

I was forced to flee my home torn by war with a single backpack in 2022. My creative skills are the only thing I could take with me. I realized what brings the feeling of home and soil under my feet - it’s the place where I create. I transformed my complicated experiences into a dreamcore painting series called 'Other Worlds' which includes many pieces, where I'm exploring the subject of escapism and the boundaries of the transcendental - knowledge that goes beyond sensory experience, beyond the bounds of space and time. I create because I can’t help but create. My art has become my new home, a place of comfort and soul-healing meditation. By exploring ‘Other Worlds’ you can reach a mystical place and enjoy a journey in solitude to embrace your inner self.

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A story behind this particular piece:
According to the theory of panspermia, one of the theories of the origin of life - it was brought to Earth by meteors containing salt crystals with tiny droplets of water inside. Long millions of years of meteorite showers gave the earth water reservoirs where incredible metamorphosis took place from inorganic life to organic, perhaps the only conscious life in the universe.

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And now there is a place in the universe where a reverse metamorphosis from organic to inorganic life occurs in colossal quantities. It is absorbed by the soil of Soledar city in Ukraine, the capital of the salt mines - NaCl - a mineral of the origin of life, sacred in humankind culture. This frontline city is a portal to other dimensions where hundreds of thousands of souls are reincarnated, closing the cycle of life.