When Valeria first saw the sea, she was one year old, and had no idea that she stood on the shores of that which was to become friend and livelihood, solace and celebration.
It was August 18, 1995, and marked the beginning of a ritual that would last several years: a trip to the seaside on Valeria’s and her father’s common birthday. Novo Mikhailovsky township on the Black Sea provided the backdrop for many of the first 17 years of this tradition, and it grew to become an experience that brought the family together, united by their love of nature and the elements. As she grew older, it took on added significance: the annual seven hour trip to the Black Sea or the Sea of Azov happened just before school reopened every year, and she found that splashing around in the gentle waves on the coast was much more fun than spending several hours standing while the school term-opening event took place.
She still remembers, with crystal clarity, the summer of 2003, when she was nine years old. It was the beginning of September, and the school year had just started. Valeria and her parents were driving to the sea pier, and she knew that the plan was to rent a boat and spend the whole day swimming in the open sea. Lounging in the back seat, completely and utterly free, Valeria talked on the phone with her best friend, who had just come back from school, who told her about how tired she was. At that moment, she realized how lucky she was to not be in her friend’s shoes, and that she had this little private tradition that was her very own.
She didn’t love school; many of her memories from that time are of wanting to swim in the cerulean water, of competing with her father to see which of them could jump further, quicker, and deeper into the water from the boat, of trying to catch the ball before he could. Looking back at her win-loss record, she now suspects that he might have let her win now and then, as all good parents do. He taught her how to swim, how to use a snorkel, and how to embrace the depths of the ocean without fear. Even today, the sea fascinates and inspires Valeria; her annual trips have had a formative role in her growth as an artist. Imprinted in her mind from when she could not even walk, water bodies and waves are part of her. And now she paints the sea in all its glory and splendor.
Almost three decades after her first trip to the seaside, things are very different for Valeria. Her father passed away eleven years ago, and her mother lives far away. But her first family tradition is still going strong; she still visits the sea every August / September with her husband. For almost two years, they lived by the Mediterranean Sea in Turkey, and its azure beauty provided a huge boost to her artistic career. No longer did she have to rely on photographs from the internet; she could watch the sea at close quarters, hour after hour, and take in every nuance of light and shade, ebb and flow.
Today, Valeria’s water art is a social media phenomenon. Her Instagram page surpassed 75K followers by the end of 2023, with 90% of them having discovered her work in that year alone. Her top 50 IG reels have gathered over 21 million views as of January 2024, with five of them having crossed a million views individually. Her most viewed reel, a look at her art space, has almost 2 million views and 150,000 likes. 65 of her reels, in all – depicting her paintings of oceans and waves, her creative process, and quirky snapshots of her life as an artist – have racked up more than a hundred thousand views. She has created 70 paintings as of January 2024, with many different canvas sizes – from 1 square foot (0.1 sq. m.) to 8 square feet (0.8 sq. m.). 31 of them have been sold (as of December 2023) to buyers from many different countries; the top three are the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
So how did Valeria get to where she is today? She estimates that she has spent close to 9000 hours of her life creating art, with 700 of those hours coming in 2023 alone. But it is also a story of unbridled creativity, a lifelong love for the sea, and the will to succeed against all odds. Here’s a look at one of her personal favorite pieces: Azure Ambience.
Azure Ambience
The best way to observe the interplay of light and water, especially with ocean waves, is with the eyes. Photographs rarely do it justice, even if you have almost 50 megapixels at your command. But every time light shimmers on the wave crests of Azure Ambience, it feels like a captured star.
Azure Ambience was created over a three week period in September 2023, and was inspired by the Mediterranean Sea. As soon as Valeria took the reference photo, she knew that she had something special: the atmosphere that day and the subtle hues of the ocean both combined to create magic.
Azure Ambience also has a unique kinetic quality. As you gaze intently at the sun-dappled water, you become aware of the 3D nature of the painting; you imagine ebbs and flows, and gentle swells.
There were four main stages in the process of creation of Azure Ambience:
1. Reference Photograph: Valeria had taken many photos of the Mediterranean that day; she first picked the one she liked best, cropped it till it was just right, and made small edits till she had a solid reference to work from.
2. Getting the Colors right: Valeria always experiments with different color palettes to capture the soul of the sea, and this stage can sometimes take quite a while. Luckily, Azure Ambience’s palette came together in just the second attempt.
3. Layers: Azure Ambience has five layers of paint. This process took up a large portion of the three weeks; each layer had to be completely dry before the next one could be painted on.
4. Fresh Eyes: After the first version of Azure Ambience was ready, Valeria set it aside for a week, and worked on other things. When she came back, she added a few small details. Finally, she was satisfied that she had created something truly exceptional.
When Valeria looks back at Azure Ambience, she has a meditative experience: she can hear the rhythmic sound of water lapping at the Mediterranean shore. It creates a focus point for her to organize her thoughts and find clarity and peace. Her Instagram audience agrees: uniquely, she has created a corner of the internet where there are only positive vibes and gratitude. Here are some facts about the comments made on the Azure Ambience IG post:
- There are 11 different positive emojis used by different commenters; the most common ones are two different kinds of hearts: ❤ ️ and 💙.
- Of the many adjectives that fans of Valeria’s work used to describe Azure Ambience, the most common are versions (in Portuguese, French, English, and many other languages) of *magnificent* and *amazing*.
Synesthesia is a phenomenon, seen only in 1% – 4% of people, in which one sensory experience (for example, seeing something) triggers several other sensory reactions (e.g. the visual experience of the sight, and a memory of a sound that is linked to the visual experience). Azure Ambience brings the experience of synesthesia to everybody: if you spend some time looking at it, your ears and brain will begin to fill with the gentle, unending thunder of waves breaking on a rocky shore.
Valeria has loved art for as long as she can remember. She was always drawn to creative people. However, after graduating from art school for children aged 9-14, she hit a roadblock: she was convinced that she would never be able to create great art, and put away her dreams for a while. She was even envious of those who could create, of musicians, visual artists, poets, sculptors. For ten years, she did not touch a paintbrush, she did not look at a canvas. All that changed, however, in early 2019, when she went for her first ever oil painting lesson.
The First Big Painting
Valeria went into her first ever oil painting lesson filled with doubt. The medium was completely new to her; she had never worked with acrylics or oil paints. At first, everything seemed alien: from holding the brush to mixing colors and feeling textures, nothing came easy. But two things worked in her favor: first, the class was tasked with painting a wave. Of all the subjects that could have been chosen, this was the one that was closest to Valeria’s soul, and she grew to love the process. And her teacher was helpful and patient; together, Valeria and her teacher created her first wave study.
She rushed back home, her mind on fire with the limitless possibilities of painting water and waves and the ocean. Brushes, paints, a canvas – they were all ordered, and she sat impatiently counting the hours till they were delivered. She might have ordered more colors than she needed; today, almost 5 years later, she still has a few of them in her box. Her husband bought her a second canvas – a larger, 90 cm x 90 cm canvas – one that was so special to her that she didn’t want to experiment on it. It still sits, wrapped up safely, in her parents’ house, and our story goes back to the first canvas she bought.
Armed with her new brushes and paints, Valeria sat on the floor, selected the perfect reference from Pinterest, and started. She estimates that she spent a week making oil paints swirl this way and that across the canvas, and at the end of that week she was not happy with the result. Self-doubt attacked her, and she considered dropping the idea of painting the sea – or painting at all.
But, as luck would have it, a friend of hers gifted Valeria a smaller canvas a few days later, and she tried painting a simple picture of flowers, and loved the result. This gave her the confidence she needed to go back to her sea painting project (pictured above), and complete it. The journey was not easy; there were frustrations, and she cried aloud at the canvas multiple times. But when it was finished, she looked at it with satisfaction. She knew then, and she knows now, that it wasn’t perfect, but it was – and is – beautiful despite its flaws.
Other people thought so, too – the painting is now in a private collection in Dresden, Germany. Despite how hard the process was, and despite the fact that it taught Valeria that she had much more to learn, it marks the first time she knew for certain that she was born to paint the sea in all its moods – imperious and chaotic and serene and playful.
Valeria’s first oil painting lesson happened in early 2019; her first big sea painting project happened later that year. After that, it turned into a hobby for her, one that made her soul sing. In October 2022, she was finally ready to become Valeria Ocean – a full time artist of the sea and waves, and she never looked back.
Transforming Homes into Oases of Serenity
With over thirty large scale oil paintings sold to collectors across the world, Valeria takes pride in making her creations’ journeys to their forever homes special. For example, the painting above (Underwater Rocks), is of medium size (35 cm width x 45 cm height x 2 cm thickness), and uses a high quality cotton canvas. Her favorite paint brands are Winsor & Newton, Van Gogh, and Rembrandt. Underwater Rocks uses only five colors: titanium white, ultramarine blue, cadmium yellow, madder lake (a reddish hue), and turquoise.
Valeria delights in adding a personal touch whenever she ships a painting. First, she writes a letter to thank the collector for supporting her art. She also likes to add small gifts – such as a few postcards – with the main painting being shipped. The painting itself is first wrapped in paper, and then protected with two or three layers of bubble wrap. Soft foam corners ensure that the angular portions of the painting are safe, and a 5 cm thick protective foam cover sits on either side of the artwork. The entire cocoon sits in a cardboard box, ready to fly across borders to bring the endless ocean to someone’s walls.
As she looks forward to even more success in her art career, Valeria feels gratitude. Gratitude to her family (her mother, Elena, her father, Andrey, and her husband, Aleksandr) who have been with her during every step of her personal and professional journey, and who supported her as she grew from an occasional painter to an accomplished fine artist, bringing joy to hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. She is also grateful to the artist Irina Cumberland, whose art lessons helped her sharpen her skills.
Links
Valeria’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/valeria.ocean/.
Website: https://valeriaocean.com/.
Artfinder Page: https://www.artfinder.com/artist/valeria-ocean/.
Saatchi Art page: https://www.saatchiart.com/valeriaocean.