We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rodion Abramenko a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Rodion, appreciate you joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I think it all starts with desire and the opportunities you have in a given moment. There’s no fixed goal — just the process and the time you’re willing to give to it. Beyond that, there’s an endless amount of knowledge and skills, and it all becomes a lifelong search and reinterpretation.

But the most essential skill, for me, is learning how to interact — with your surroundings and with what you feel inside.

As for obstacles, that might be too strong a word. Obstacles exist when things are concrete, but here, it’s more of a drift — nothing is owed to anyone, and it has to come from the soul.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Rodion, I’m 29 years old. I work primarily in artistic design and freelance art—both digital and physical. My journey into this field wasn’t linear: I originally studied industrial and civil urban planning, but creativity was always present in my life. It started with graffiti, which gradually grew into something more than a hobby and became both a form of self-expression and a professional path.

Alongside visual art, I’ve also explored fashion through a small local clothing brand. It wasn’t focused on commercial success, but rather on doing something I truly enjoyed. Unfortunately, due to the war, the brand is currently on hold.

As for art itself—it’s always a reflection. Mostly from an unconscious place that finds form and tells a story, perhaps metabolizing some inner chaos of feelings and thoughts. It’s more about expressing experience, knowledge, perception, a sense of the world around you, and one’s involvement in everything that’s happening—maybe even as a kind of reflection.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

There was a moment when I had to pause almost everything I was doing — my local clothing brand, art projects, commissions. The war changed everything, and I was thrown out of any familiar structure. Over time, I turned inward and started creating without a goal, without a task — just in a flow.

I kept drawing, doing small things on the side. Do something — and something will come. That always works. The most important thing is to try to hear yourself, not the noise around you.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

Most of my understanding has come from personal experience and real conversations. I try to approach things as if I were doing them for myself.

Business literature often offers a clear model or structure to follow, but in practice, things are rarely that straightforward. For me, it’s more of a constant balancing act between necessity and conscience. And over time, that has shaped a flexible, intuitive way of working with people — not rigid, but based on trust, responsiveness, and mutual respect.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @raskazzz