Month: April 2025

SPRING

Helen Polishuk Leave a comment

Why does April end so quickly?
Who can answer this question?
Maybe time has been sped up and it has become faster?
Maybe there are a lot of things to do and they make the day go by faster?
Maybe you are just lazy?
All together – it is spring.
What will you do to enjoy the fresh gust of wind that brings spring and beauty?
What will you do to change the usual atmosphere for new activities and meetings?
What will you do to stop everything and do your most beloved and dear – creativity?
Spring.
Every day of April was different.
The sun will jump out and happy people, undressing, will start meeting in the awakened city.
Then the wind will blow and everyone will hide in their houses again.
And the trees are still bare – they do not feel the warmth and sun – there is too little of it yet.
They have not received the signal and the order – blossom, there will be no cold until October.
Even the birds – although it is time for them to build their nests and sit down to hatch their chicks, they are not ready yet. The birds have already divided into their pairs, in some places they are still dividing up territories (we were at the lake last weekend and saw two males dancing in front of each other on the water, screaming loudly).

Their dance is a struggle and competition.

In April, everything is reborn.
Everything that was old and unnecessary recedes into oblivion, like rotten grass after winter.
Much is realized in a new way, in a different way, and changes with awakening.

What I would like to tell you now is one piece of wisdom that I have noticed in flowers.
Bulbous flowers are the first to wake up. These are beautiful, bright, fragrant flowers, whose rebirth is laid down far in the depths of winter and cold.
And here is what a strong productive energy is laid down in them when they go towards the light, towards the sun and warmth. They overcome a lot of obstacles to expose their tiny heads for one week to the spring sun. And only one week they play with their beauty. Only one week they give their love.
Wonderful!
After them, as a signal, the buds on the trees begin to move – I noticed from the cut grapes that this is how the vessels supply juice and nutrition from the roots to the branches at the beginning of spring to revive the buds on the trees. And now, during the day, you can see how the buds come to life, gain strength, put on their color, and grow in volume.
Wonderful!
Coming home, you want to change it, decorate and update it.
I took on this difficult task and decided that I would update the house by making artificial flowers from delicate violets and grapevine saved from last year’s fall.
What came out of it? A small decor that can be easily hung anywhere in the room.
Mood?
Wonderful!

After silence

Helen Polishuk

What to write after a long silence of two months?

What to say when it is better to just keep quiet? And it is true.

This year(2025 Snack) is very scary in its events and in its course. Starting the year with fantastic plans and the development of my art gallery, which Art Etobicoke gratefully offered me, with plans to fulfill the dream of working with children and adults, teaching them artistic creativity, improving my mentoring skills – instead of this, I will simply say that I fell out of life. I had to chaotically take up the creation of paintings, because I was afraid to stop. There was a time when creating paintings was so difficult for me, but very necessary. Therefore, there was another period when I posted and wrote and created something, until I stopped. And at this zero, it is already very difficult to get up, start your creative motor, pick up the speed that was at the beginning of the year. My loved ones, my environment, “moves” me. Thanks to them, I am grateful.
I have already visited the Easter bazar.
It even seemed to me that it was not only me – the audience of the bazar was so small.

I slept through (in the full sense of the word) the February and March gallery meetings.
Yesterday, for the first time after silence, I filled out a questionnaire for the upcoming exhibition.
That’s why I say – it is difficult to start something when the energy is at zero. There are a lot of internal excuses that twist from within and belatedly ask not to go, not to agree, not to rush, not to create, no..no..no.
However, I will tell you and show you all three paintings that I will present at the exhibition this month.
It turned out that, in keeping with the theme, they were all created in 2019. Not at the end, when the quarantine dome hung over us all, but at the beginning. This was special year. I have created a lot of paintings and they all differ from the previous and subsequent ones in style and color. Series 2019.

This series is made in a warm yellow-brown ochre color with my unique style of abstract expressionism that I created in those two years. It is the strokes that add charm to the paintings, they have more emphasis and meaning.
Everything in order.


Small, delicate two paintings, “Ballerina 1” and “Ballerina 2” were created at the same time. It was a period that absorbed in me to express the feminine inner creative “I”.

It was embodied in the movement of the Ballerina, in her dance, in her hand positioning and image.

This is not some specific ballerina, this is an image that symbolizes femininity and love for dance. There was a romantic mood and I really wanted to embody it in the painting. Therefore, I combined the dance and the image of the ballerina to emphasize the feminine principle, Venus and the symbol of beauty, grace and fragility. The paintings were painted on a base where I chose yellow ocher.

Working with this color was the basis of 2019. You will ask:,,Why exactly this colour?” It is not a bright color. It is a shadow, tint, primary color.

This is exactly what made me work with it.

I I was time not drawn to brightness. I left the dark color that I loved in previous years – in previous years I was carried away by black. In general, I have a lot of dark colors – early paintings were similar to graphics and made in oil on canvas in a black and white collection after returning from France in early 1995-1996. These paintings can now only be seen in buyers’ collections.
I survived that period and was reborn and no longer want to return to the black and white palette. So I am also finished with this yellow-brown ochra period.
I will repeat once again – there was a period of absolute warmth and love, grounding and comprehension at the beginning of 2019, when nothing promised tragic consequences and the closure of the quarantine curtain over all of us.
I dabbled in a casual style and painted … myself … my experiences. They were expressed in the next painting, “Nude”.

The style and manner of execution of this painting is that I use strokes to mask the clarity and the stroked outline of a naked woman. But you all see perfectly well that this is a woman. As if naked, we see the silhouette, but at the same time, we do not clearly see her body.
And the mysticism that has accompanied me throughout my life as an artist.
It was 2019. Look at the left shoulder of the female silhouette – there is a tattoo there.
Imagine that two years later, on a pre-war trip to Kyiv, in that place of body, on my left shoulder, I got a tattoo, along the outlines – like in this painting.
I did not even think about it on purpose.
I will even say it differently.

After creating this painting, “Nude”, I covered it with varnish and hid it until better times, because in my circle there was no opportunity to exhibit it in a gallery salon and there was no demand for it.

That is, as always, it was born ahead of time.
And here is the year 2025.
Yesterday I received an application to submit my works for the upcoming exhibition. I began to leaf through all my works (I have electronic versions of my works, collected by year)
The theme of the upcoming exhibition is Gender.
And I settled on these three paintings, in which “Nude” is the central one.