In 2011, I began working at the Department of Academic Painting at the Lviv National Academy of Arts. It marked a new stage in my teaching career. There, I attained the academic rank of Associate Professor and continued to combine teaching with my own artistic practice and research.

One important part of my work was developing a painting curriculum for students across different departments of the Academy. The challenge was to preserve the foundations of academic painting while adapting the teaching methods to the needs of different fields.

Teaching painting to students of artistic ceramics, metalwork, interior design, fashion design, and other disciplines was especially valuable to me. Elective courses broadened this experience further, bringing me into contact with students for whom painting would serve very different purposes in their future work.

This experience gradually changed how I understood teaching. Painting for a designer, ceramicist, or metal artist cannot simply follow the same academic programme. The foundation remains shared, but what students learn should help them develop their understanding of colour, form, space, composition, and their own artistic language in relation to their chosen field.

During this period, I worked alongside Yaroslav Shymin, Volodymyr Cherkasov, Oleksandr Krokhmaliuk, Anatolii Bulychev, Ihor Mikula, Ihor Havryshkevych, and Nataliia Tsyduliak. Their different artistic perspectives and teaching methods created an environment of ongoing professional dialogue.

The exhibitions of the Department of Academic Painting in 2018, 2020, and 2021 were an important part of that environment. They offered an opportunity to see a teacher not only as an educator but, above all, as a practising artist whose own work remains central to their professional development. Later, the department also organised a series of group exhibitions online in which I participated. This new format allowed our artistic and professional dialogue to continue beyond the traditional exhibition space.

For me, this period became an extended exploration of the relationship between artistic practice, teaching, and academic tradition. I came to see teaching painting less as passing on a complete system and more as laying the foundation from which students can develop their own way of seeing.