3rd Prize RAYMAR Painting Award

Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize 2026

Denis Sarazhin

Title:

“Forgotten Tales” 

Medium & Dimensions:

oil on canvas, 64 x 62″

About the Artist

Denis Sarazhin (b. 1982, Ukraine) is a contemporary painter living and working in New York / New Jersey, USA. His work moves between abstraction and figuration, emphasizing suggestion rather than fixed narrative. Rather than telling a specific story, his paintings remain open, allowing meaning to emerge through careful looking and personal interpretation. In his recent work, forms shift between recognition and disappearance. At times, the human figure dissolves into the composition; at others, it becomes the central structure of the image. Through considered compositional decisions and color harmony, Sarazhin creates a subtle balance between clarity and uncertainty. Sarazhin graduated from the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts in 2008. He has held solo exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Stuttgart, and Kyiv, and his work is included in public and private collections, including the New Salem Museum. He works primarily in oil on canvas.

“Forgotten Tales”: Forgotten Tales explores the shifting nature of symbols through a contemporary synthesis of myth, legend, and archetypal imagery. By combining human and animal forms in an ambiguous, emotionally charged space, the work invites multiple readings rather than a fixed narrative. It reflects my interest in how different cultures interpret the same symbols in different ways, revealing meaning as something fluid, unstable, and continuously reshaped by memory, perception, and collective experience.