Darlis: Colour, Symbolism, and the Mediterranean Light

By: Chieloka Anadu

Daria Demchuk, who works under the artistic name Darlis, is a France-based, self-taught artist moving across acrylic painting, watercolour, and digital art. Her practice centers on colour, nature, human presence, and symbolic form, but at its heart is a more specific curiosity: the emotional relationship between an image and the person looking at it, and how colour, light, composition, and familiar subjects combine to create a particular feeling or atmosphere. That curiosity recently produced Energy of Colour, a completed seven-work acrylic series exploring the emotional resonance of colour through floral motifs. Alongside her painting, she also develops digital work that lets her explore more figurative, imaginative, and narrative territory.

Her inspiration tends to come from what is already visually and emotionally present in daily life – nature, flowers, the sea, people, animals, colour, and the small moments that might otherwise pass unnoticed. She is drawn to symbolism, and to the way meaning and emotion attach themselves to visual elements almost involuntarily. An idea, she says, often begins with a single colour, image, or feeling before gradually growing into something larger. Energy of Colour started exactly this way, out of a question about what happens when a particular colour meets a particular flower, and how that pairing shapes perception and emotional response. Living in the South of France has shaped this relationship with colour further still – the intensity of the Mediterranean light, she notes, inevitably finds its way into how she sees and paints the world.

Her artistic influences span centuries and movements without settling into a single tradition. She points to Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci for their mastery of composition, form, and the human figure, and to Degas for his ability to capture movement and atmosphere. Among more modern figures, she has grown increasingly drawn to Matisse’s expressive use of colour and to Van Gogh’s emotionally charged approach to the same. Salvador Dalí holds a particular place in her thinking too, especially in the moments where his realism meets imagination and symbolism. But it is Nicholas Roerich she describes as especially meaningful. She is fascinated by the atmosphere, symbolism, and almost otherworldly quality of his landscapes, and by his reminder that a painting can hold not just a place, but a feeling, an idea, or an entire inner world.

Materials, for Demchuk, are chosen in service of the idea rather than out of habit. She works primarily in acrylic on canvas, valuing the way it lets her build colour and texture in layers, working both precisely and intuitively. Alongside this, she works digitally, mainly through Procreate, and enjoys the contrast between the two approaches – the physical, tactile pull of traditional painting against the freedom digital work offers to experiment with composition, colour, and visual possibility. Her current practice moves fluidly between acrylic, watercolour, Procreate, and digital illustration, with the medium always following the needs of the individual piece.

When creative blocks arrive, she resists treating them as a problem to be solved by force. Often the better response, she has found, is simply to step away from a piece and give herself room. Inspiration tends to return on its own once she stops chasing it – through observing nature, experimenting with colour, or working on something else entirely. She has also learned to begin work without knowing exactly where it will end, trusting that the process itself can reveal the idea, so that what looks at first like a lack of inspiration turns out to be part of the creative work all along.

If her artwork could speak, she imagines it would say: look again, and listen to your heart. She is conscious of how easily people move through the world without registering colour, light, texture, or the small details around them, and she wants her work to create a moment of pause – something felt first, and perhaps understood differently afterward. She resists the idea that a painting should carry one fixed interpretation, preferring instead to leave enough space for each viewer to bring their own experience to it.

Participating in the Anadu Art Fair carries particular weight for Demchuk, since it will be her very first exhibition as an artist. Still finding her way through the professional art world, she describes being selected for an international fair in Lagos as both exciting and a little surreal. Professionally, she sees it as an important first step in building an exhibition practice and introducing her work to a new international audience. Personally, she is simply glad to share a series that means a great deal to her and to see how it resonates within a cultural environment very different from her own, and she speaks with clear gratitude toward the Anadu team for including her work in their inaugural fair.

Follow Darlis’ story on Instagram: @artbydarlis