Twenty-one oil paintings of lifeguard towers, clouds, skies and flat stretches of shoreline are now hanging inside the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County at 601 Lake Avenue in Lake Worth Beach. The work belongs to Bogdan Kravchenko, a West Palm Beach painter who trained at the Kyiv Academy of Art in Ukraine, and the exhibition is free to see through Saturday, Dec. 5.

The show opened Oct. 23 in the Council's Gayle and Paul Gross Gallery and is the first of six solo exhibitions the Council has scheduled for its 2026-2027 season. Each of those six slots went to a Palm Beach County artist picked through a competitive application, with a committee of visual art professionals making the selections.

A lifeguard stand, read slowly

Anyone who has spent a morning on a South Florida beach knows the shape of a lifeguard tower. Kravchenko treats it as more than a summer post. In his description of the series, the tower and the person sitting in it carry ideas about duty, stoicism and emotion, with the beach standing in for order and safety and the open ocean standing in for something vast and indifferent.

The paintings themselves lean toward contemporary minimalism. Kravchenko works the coastal landscape into abstract close-ups, balancing natural forms such as clouds and water against architectural structure. A signature device runs through the series: thin, translucent bands of color that cut across a sky or settle along the foreground. He uses those stripes as a kind of filter, a way of showing how memory and screens change the way a place is remembered. One canvas in the show, Sparkling Ocean from 2025, measures 30 by 30 inches.

From Kyiv book graphics to the shoreline

Kravchenko grew up in Ukraine and studied at the Kyiv Academy of Art, where his coursework included book graphics and illustration. He then spent years in advertising and design before turning his attention to painting the Florida coast. The Council traces his attention to composition, form and visual communication back to that design career.

The exhibition was curated by Jessica Ransom, the Council's director of artist services. It is the first show in the Gross Gallery since the Council reopened its galleries this fall.

Clay in the next room

Visitors can pair the paintings with a second free show under the same roof. Molded and Mannered, in the Donald M. Ephraim Family Foundation Gallery, gathers work by members of the Ceramic League of the Palm Beaches and runs through Dec. 12. The pieces range from functional objects to sculpture, and the show is built around how each artist shapes, fires and transforms clay.

The Council is headquartered in the historic Robert M. Montgomery, Jr. Building downtown, which also holds the Roe Green Uniquely Palm Beach Store, where Palm Beach County artisans sell handmade work, and a visitor information center.

Planning a visit

The Council is open to the public Tuesday through Friday from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday hours have not returned yet, but the Council has scheduled free docent-led gallery tours every Saturday at 1:30 p.m. starting Nov. 7. Parking is free for up to four hours on downtown Lake Worth Beach streets, and there is a public lot on the east side of L Street next to the building. The front entrance on the north side of the property has a ramp, and accessible restrooms are on the first floor.

Kravchenko's run ends Dec. 5. The next solo artist in the Gross Gallery, photographer and visual artist Elena Mamenko, opens Dec. 11.

What: Bogdan Kravchenko solo exhibition, 21 oil paintings of the coast, plus Molded and Mannered, a Ceramic League of the Palm Beaches show
When: Kravchenko through Dec. 5; Molded and Mannered through Dec. 12. Tuesday through Friday, noon to 5 p.m. Free docent tours Saturdays at 1:30 p.m. starting Nov. 7
Where: Cultural Council for Palm Beach County, 601 Lake Avenue, Lake Worth Beach
Cost: Free

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