Studios of Sanctuary is Sample-Studios’ multi award-winning training and mentorship programme for artists from an asylum seeker, refugee or migrant background. The programme was successfully piloted from 2021-23 with the support of the Cork Arts Fund and has continued in 2024 with support from Rethink Ireland. The programme offers eight artists from asylum seeker, refugee and migrant backgrounds a programme of professional development training, one-to-one expert mentorship, a peer network, access to facilities, a monthly bursary and funding support to deliver community events.

Tetiana Milshyna is an artist and art teacher from Kyiv, Ukraine where she had been living and working prior to the outbreak of war in February 2022. She fled her home in Ukraine bringing with her over 200 of her watercolours to Cork City. Tetiana taught watercolour painting in an art school for adults, facilitated workshops and worked as a freelance artist and illustrator in Kyiv. Her paintings have been reproduced as posters and postcards in Ukraine. She has had solo exhibitions in Kinsale Library, The Lord Mayor’s Pavilion, The Address Hotel and most recently, Cnoc Bui in Union Hall. Her paintings are held in private collections in European countries including Ukraine, Ireland, France and Spain. She is the recipient of an Arts Council of Ireland Agility Award which has funded her creation of a series of watercolour lighthouses of Ireland.

Being a watercolour landscape artist, based in Cork, her practice is focused on the surrounding seascapes, lighthouses, countryside scenes, historical and archeological heritage. Her works include plein air and studio watercolours of Munster seascapes and countryside landscapes, especially of county Cork and also some works of different places in nearby counties. Her latest body of work ‘Between Sea and Light’ consists of 20 paintings of Irish lighthouses up to now, done in watercolour and gouache both in studio and plein air. Her urban Cork body of work consists of several Cork City scenes such as St. Lukes Cross, Blackpool Street, St. Patrick Hill, Blackrock pier. She also has special interest in Prehistoric and Medieval Irish heritage, such as stone circles, stone rows, ogham stones, castles, churches and monastery ruins. Having exhibited as part of a group exhibition during STAMP Festival in Triskel Arts Centre, Tetiana was inspired by the space.

She exhibited a series of Cork scenes while carrying out a residency in Triskel Sample Project Space in January 2025 which enabled her to create a new body of work exploring urban and rural surrounding scenes.

I am very grateful for the opportunity to undertake an artist residency and solo exhibition TRISKEL SAMPLE Project Space in January 2025. The flexibility of the space allowed me to display a selection of my watercolours and gouaches 2022-24 while developing my studio practice. I also created a new series of 11 small sketches of the urban environment in Cork City Centre, executed in a free style in watercolour and graphic materials. The opportunity to display my existing work in tandem with my studio practice allowed me to review how my practice over the last 3 years, focused on Irish nature and heritage, related to the emerging direction of my practice now, taking in a new environment and revisiting a loose style I had previously employed when working in Ukraine. The TRISKEL SAMPLE Project Space provided an ideal base for this as I built this new body of work through walks around the city accompanied by a sketchbook and camera, working en plein air or bringing photographs back to the Project Space. Throughout my residency, I was delighted to introduce my art to a new audience in person, and I enjoyed hearing visitors’ reactions to my work first-hand. I was also able to use the time and space to develop future projects and make important connections that will direct my future work.