Underwater Painting in the Black Sea

Ukraine’s Amazing Underwater Painters

By Spooky on November 4th, 2011 Category: Art, Pics

You can’t rush art! That’s what they say anyway, but that rule doesn’t apply to the members of Ukraine’s national school of underwater painting, who have just 40 minutes of oxygen to complete their masterpieces.

Painting usually takes patience and comfort to produce memorable works of art, but the artists painting in the depths of the Black Sea can’t really afford to take their time, because that would mean risking their lives. The unusual group of painters, all certified divers, work at depths of between 2 and 20 meters, and claim what they do is just like regular painting, only their canvases are covered with a waterproof adhesive coating, before they plunge into the sea. Although they decide at what depth they want to work, underwater painters have to be very careful because the deeper they go the more color is lost, and on the surface colors look totally different. Red, for example, turns brown or even black.

Photo via Artvertep

They say the human eye is much more sensitive to the nuances of underwater colors than any camera lens, film or image capture process. “The light reflected in the water is dissipated and we get a lot of glare on the surface. The light falls on corals and stones, and that multicoloured world is so amazing when you are there under water. You want to express your feelings “, scuba-artist Oksana Bilyk told EuroNews. Considering the waters of the Black Sea aren’t the clearest in the world and that 40 minutes isn’t very long for a painter, I’d say these guys do a tremendous job. Some of their work is currently on exhibit at Swallow’s Nest Castle, near Yalta, one of the Ukraine’s most beautiful tourist attractions.