There is a woman in Maryna Tsoneva’s studio right now who will not look away from you.
She sits behind the wheel of a vintage red car, somewhere in a city at night — the lights blur behind her into soft halos of gold and pink. She wears a green felt hat and burgundy gloves. A white shawl streams behind her as if she has just arrived, or is about to leave. She is turned toward you, looking directly into your eyes, and her expression says: I know exactly where I am going.
She belongs to a series Tsoneva has been painting called Between the Wars. She is inspired by the women of the first great displacement — artists and survivors who fled revolution and war in the 1920s and built new lives in Paris, New York, Buenos Aires. Women like Tamara de Lempicka, who left Poland when the world she knew collapsed, and poured everything she had lost into the cool, luminous geometry of Art Deco.
“I didn’t plan to paint her,” Tsoneva says. “She came to me because I needed her.”
Maryna Tsoneva — who signs her canvases as Mari Bloom — was born in Ukraine in 1972, into a world of Soviet minimalism: identical high-rises, monotonous gray concrete. But at home, on her mother’s bookshelf, a different universe lived inside a single volume titled The Hermitage.
“I spent hours turning its glossy pages,” she recalls, “and those masterpieces became my window into a reality filled with incredible color and light.”
That deep connection to beauty never left her. She trained at the Kharkiv State Academy of Culture, earning a degree in Theatre Directing with coursework in Art History, Stage Design, and Scenography — a training that still shapes how she composes a canvas, staging light and figure the way a director frames a scene.
“Although I had a happy childhood,” Tsoneva says, “it was an upbringing within the Soviet Union, so not such an easy life for my parents. People across the world encounter struggles in life, so I do not like to complain. Yes, I find myself displaced from my homeland because of war, but I am determined to make the best of my situation.”
In early 2022, when war broke out while she was on a short holiday, Tsoneva’s life took a dramatic turn. She eventually landed in Florida with just one suitcase — which, instead of clothes, was filled with her paints, brushes, and canvases.
“He took nothing,” one might imagine a friend saying of her art. She built her life around those bristles.
“In early 2022 I partnered with my son and together we opened the Paint Bar Art Studio in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine,” she explains. Since arriving in America, she has continued working on her art and teaching others in her free time. On April 27, 2024, she opened The Fun Pelican Art Studio at the Artmosphere Gallery & Studios in St. Petersburg, Florida.
“The studio is for those people who have dreamed of either painting or drawing but have never tried it,” she says warmly. “I welcome everyone to come in and discover their hidden talents.”
Her current body of work spans portrait, landscape, and still life, yet it is in contemporary portraiture and floral paintings that she captures what she calls “the subtle weight of human presence.” The women of Between the Wars look at the viewer and do not look away — because, Tsoneva believes, “they have already survived something, and they know it.”
“Today, I live and work in sunny Tampa, Florida,” she says. “My world is oils, acrylics, and canvas. In my work, I look for that same pure, deep color that first struck me as a child. It is important to me that a painting sparks an honest dialogue with the viewer — bringing warmth, shifting a mood, or recalling something deeply personal.”
Recognition has followed. Tenderness was selected for the Digital Showcase at Seattle Art Fair 2026 with TERAVARNA Gallery; Brunette earned a place in the international exhibition Emotions 2026 by Gallerium; she has shown in the Faces Virtual Exhibition with the Women in Arts Network; and she is an International Member of the Portrait Society of America.
On mentorship and networking, Tsoneva is philosophical and practical.
“As a creative person, I’m always looking for information and teachers,” she says. “The best teachers are the old Italian masters. Museums are my passion.”
Among contemporary American artists, her favorite is Jeremy Mann. Her dream is to take fine art at the New York Academy of Art, and she is actively searching for grants and sponsorship to help her get there.
“I’m looking to fulfil my dream,” she says. “Talk to everybody that shows interest in what you do — this is my best advice.”
Over the years, Tsoneva’s canvases have been exhibited in galleries across Florida and Italy, and many have found homes in private collections worldwide. “The beauty I first discovered as a child continues through my work, now living in homes across different continents,” she reflects.
She frames her creative mission simply and intimately, inviting each viewer into it: Tell me about the moment you want to hold onto. A trip you can’t forget. A face you miss. A place that felt like home. Or maybe you’re looking for a gift that means something. I’ll paint it — in oil or acrylic, any size, shipped to your door. No studios, no posing. Just your story, on canvas.
“My determination to succeed and follow my passion,” she says, “I believe sets me apart from many others.”
And in a Tampa studio, a woman with a green felt hat and burgundy gloves still sits behind the wheel of her vintage red car, meeting every gaze directly. She does not blink. She knows exactly where she is going.
Maryna Tsoneva (Mari Bloom) is an oil painter and fine artist working in Lake City, Florida. Her work can be seen at maribloomfineart.com and artsoneva.com.
Photo credits: Artist’s archieve
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