The duality of our world has always fascinated me. Telling Dasha’s story allowed me to explore in-depth the mysterious relationship between beauty and pain, physical struggle and human determination to create.

Dasha’s diagnosis – cerebral palsy – could have become her one and only destiny if she wasn’t courageous enough to express herself artistically. To witness Dasha’s everyday life through the camera’s lens was not an easy endeavor. The amount of pain she experiences is hard to ignore or cover up. But the magic happens when you see her eyes, always full of joy and hope. Every moment Dasha has to decide if she is going to create the painting or succumb to all the restraints of her physical condition. There are hours of terrible pain, numerous pills and injections her mom has to give her to ease the spasms. But never once the pain is treated as an excuse to not do her work. She works slowly and takes a lot of short breaks. As it was discovered over the period of filming, she painted 5-6 hours daily and would only skip a day if she ran out of art supplies. As a result of her determination and hard work, Dasha opened her 6th personal exhibition.

The destiny that unfolds in front of our own eyes isn’t the one that is accepted but the one that is created. I am honored to share her story with the world in my documentary debut “The Birth of an Artist”. Let her beautiful artistic expression fuel the veins of your dreams.