In the piggy bank of every artist, if he constantly works, collection after collection is created and this is not just a bunch of paintings. I don’t stop being interested in trying a new style or getting carried away by some direction: everything is interesting to me: painting and decorative arts, ceramics and mosaics. And I want to get acquainted with everything and learn it manually. I really love the society of artists and always welcome new acquaintances. A few days ago such an acquaintance took place thanks to the society in which I am.
Her name is Meryam Ashan, a beautiful Iranian name and she carries the personification of beauty and femininity. She also brought a bunch of her paintings to our meeting and showed them. Her style is the traditional Iranian style of creating miniatures. And when she showed her works, the artist from Pakistan just jumped with admiration, because this is a very popular artistic style of miniatures, known and traditional for the East (China, Pakistan, Iran and India).
Example of miniature
The style means the creation of miniature compositions united by one meaning. So, before us was a picture in which the artist herself is presented in the center, and around her there are cats in different poses. And they are all unique, bright and in different positions.
Persian tradition miniature from 19 c.
Her miniatures were beautiful. She stood up and walked over to the switched-on computer, typed in a page and showed her her first work. The work was created in a graphic black and white style: an image of her, movement around her and a running horse nearby. “This is a horse. This symbol has a very interesting meaning in Iranian mythology and I, as an artist, personify myself with a horse.”
The Persian horse has held a place of great prominence and prestige in Iranian culture throughout its rich history. Symbolising power, loyalty, and grace, these horses played a vital role in the ancient Persian empires.
Ancient Warriors and Horse Bas-Relief: A Testament to the Achaemenid Empire’s Military Prowess
It’s interesting to meet an artist this way. You will agree that each artist, depicting his works, brings a special culture and traditions, plus a huge amount of knowledge accumulated over the years.
January 28,2024 in Toronto at Huculak Centre the most active volunteers and participants of Etobicoke organizations were awarded YVAN BAKER,MP for Etobicoke Centre,former MPP&BCG consultant.
I had the honor of being selected and awarded as an active member of the organization IOUC FOURTH WAVE .It is pride to stand among the awarded and receive an Awards from the hands of YVAN BAKER.
My awards for the Annual Community Recognation Awards nomination include not only scripts and the creation of video content, but also the popularization of the Ukrainian community beyond its borders, among Canadians and the organization and holding of an exhibition that united the Ukrainian community with other Canadian communities.
The past year was multifaceted in this regard, there were many events, I got to know our Ukrainian diaspora better, I spent all my time organizing events to make them as interesting and useful as possible for the diaspora.
Of course, this is volunteer work, which takes a lot of time from my main job and from my family. And I will never give it away time ago. But the year has passed, it is closed, awards have been received and I hope, having received a great experience, there will be new events this year. After all, I got to know an enormous number of people and we became closer and already have many new plans for new events.
I am pleased to announce that last week the opening of an exhibition January 18,2024 in Toronto was a success, where two of my works in the Petrykivka style were presented among the works. The exhibition was organized by Art Etobicoke, together with QuardReal and Art Council Toronto. The exhibition shows the winners of the competition, immigrants from Europe, and is called ROOTS. A lot of information about the exhibition, which will take place for a month(up to February 22,2024), is published on the city’s websites. I would like to say that the atmosphere of the exhibition was wonderful and meeting with creative people is always a great success:LORETTA FAVERI,CHRISTINA YARMOL,ALEXANDRA IORGU,FRANCESCO BORI,DARIA BEER,VLADIMIR TOPAL,DANA SEWELL,SZENDE TUNDERLIGETI and me,HELEN POLISHUK.
Two of my works were selected from Petrykivka, which I exhibited for the first time for a Canadian audience.
This painting for salePetrykivka,winner jury competition
It so happened that upon arrival in Canada, I again began to draw and create my own paintings. I painted to order, signed up for competitions, paid for them and received adrenaline, supported and I went to exhibitions of other artists and realized that I was drawn inside to painting flowers in tradition ukrainian style, from which my artistic creativity began. So I returned to painting Petrykivka. The first paintings were made with oil paint, this had difficulties, since in winter they did not dry well. But I continued to create and collected separately, as a collection. So, depending on the year, sometimes 4, and sometimes 10 Petrykivka came out a year.
Not a single one of the paintings I created repeated the second. And the society of Ukrainian artists, the creators of Petrykivka, inspired me .I even took a course from them then and practiced with an outstanding artist, Galuna Nazarenko, to whom I am very grateful for her mentorship. I was so captivated by this skill that I continued to create it, despite other competitions. And I did it without much advertising. So Somewhere in 2020, I already collected about 50 works and I opened my website on Facebook,
https://www.facebook.com/helenpolishukart
which was called CanadaPetrykivka. (This is my answer to some why I put such a hashtag). Last year, in 2023 ,I decided to exhibit my works at the ROOTS competition, I sent 5 arts and 2 won and are presented in the gallery QUARDREAL at Cloverdale Mall, Etobicoke. This kind of interesting news happens to people who create a lot and love creativity very much.Today both works are presented for viewing and for sale.
I continue to work and, already inspired by the opening of the exhibition and meeting creative people like me, a new work has already been created, which I will undoubtedly publish in the next post. And for my admirers and envious people, I offer you this tea.
This tea contains mint and helps you relax and not care about the troubles that happen. This winter tea is called WINTER EDITION HIVERNALE and is sold in our supermarkets in winter and helps to get what you want from the impersonality of unforeseen problems.
I’m glad to announce that the site was updated after the site crashed and I can again publish my news and talk about my work.
If before the crash of the site I wanted to inform you about some of my news, then you gave me so much power that I’ll just bombard you with news .
And thank you for learning how to kill information on my site. Don’t think that training only teaches you. Here such strength grows from such problems, you only make us professionals and experienced erudite specialists.
I won’t write where it came from, I already know that. By the way, here’s another interesting example for today. It turns out that flash drives created in China also have an expiration date. And there are specialists who can restore them.
If such an attack had not happened and the virus had not touched the flash drive with very important information, then I would not have become so experienced. It turns out that there are now viruses that know the drivers of flash drives created in China. Especially… hmm… old ones.
And if working for them, downloading a picture from the Internet, for example, a virus gets in, it attacks the flash drive driver and the flash drive stops working. The flash drive, not the documents. The documents remain intact.
And the hackers have data about the flash drives. For example, Lexor as in the photo.
Photo where I show you my lasy work ,,Funny city” ?more you can find on fb:Helenpolishuk.com when I spaek with lot of bots))
In order to open a flash drive and leave the information on it intact, you need to change the driver of the flash drive, and for this you need to know the old driver. This information is not publicly available. So, be careful, my dears, and if you are working on some kind of document before you have completed the work, do not transfer the data to the archive disk, otherwise it will be an ass. Happy New Year everyone! Happy Chinese New Year! Fantasize, create problems. How can we live without them?
I want to thank everyone who is interested and reading this post now.
Thank you, friends, for being there. This year there were many interesting events related to my artistic activities. I didn’t always have time to report this, and sometimes I was deliberately silent, because I don’t like to discuss , but the year is ending and I’m pleased to resume.
At the beginning of the year, a jury selected my work to make a banner in the city of Pickering near Toronto and now my composition adorns the main street of the city. When I created the banner, I used a composition of the wave or element symbol, which is inherent in the image used in the First Nation in combination with the popular Petrykivka style, Ukrainian traditional style.
I am very pleased with this decision in the style of color. Since the element of water is blue and the city of Pickering is located on Lake Ontario. The flowers depicted on the banner speak of an earthly image. Below is the banner Water Element’s image:
Later, in the summer, I returned to this image and, creating a collection in the Petrykivka style, I depicted this composition on wood again.
Autumn gave me my dream and I flew out of media life for a month and took up icon painting. While teaching lessons, I not only had students, but I myself went through and updated my knowledge. This is how my icons appeared.
A huge incentive for me was the result of the jury, which selected my two works in Petrykivka style for the exhibition Roots, which will open in January 2024 in Toronto.
When I sit down to create a painting, I first of all study my previous works. So, this beautiful painting was created, which is dedicated to my beloved Lvov
And absolutely new two large decorative paintings.These are memories of summer, sun, warmth and flowers, happiness and love. Large butterfly on canvas, made in a mix techniques and creating an extraordinary atmosphere of freshness and joy.
I would like to wish you, my readers, a good next year, health and prosperity to you and your families.
There was a girl, she drew. And here’s how this girl entered the group of the best artists of Ukraine since 2022, how she became an artist. This is a series of films about Helen Polishchuk. Follow the link right now
Why have you been silent lately and rarely write posts?
-It’s true, I’m working less on my website. I have a lot of work now, which doesn’t give me time to maintain the site. Today they wrote to me that they offer help in managing my accounts and raising my rating. This is all good, but I don’t agree with the prices, they are very expensive.
Where are your paintings sold?
-My paintings are exhibited in several prestigious Internet sites, such as Saachi.com
Literally today I updated the information there and added new paintings.
What do you have planned?
-I am pleased to announce that I am participating in the auction and selling my works (hand-painted Christmas tree balls).There will be a new exhibition in November with Art Etobicoke.And something completely new for me – I become a mentor and teacher and give the first lessons in icon painting for children 12-16 years old. These lessons will be held at the church at the end of November. In the last week of November, another big event will take place – I will be visiting Bradford, a city in northern Ontario, with an exhibition of photographs.
Are you still making videos?
_Yes. The new work will be released at the end of the year and it will be a short film.
What new pictures have you painted this year?
-The year has been difficult for me and although it is already coming to an end, I have just started painting. It should be noted that I am continuing the Petrykivka series and three more have been added to the 54 paintings already. This is what I have, and also my works in the Petrykivka style many acquaintances and friends already have in collections.This sumer I
presented a collection in the Petrykivka style and you saw some of the works in the previous post. These included painted panels and plates, acrylic-painted chests, wooden boards, created all sorts of painted wall products, Christmas tree decorations, and even tried to paint a woman’s bag in the same style. This style is very fashionable and popular in Mexico, where I just returned from and it is, I must say, not cheap. There are still some ideas in the project. I will put everything on the Internet and perhaps on this page too. I have a Facebook page on which I publish new works more actively than here.
The first work is called “Autumn”. This is identified with the change in the color of foliage and the appearance of red rowan. The second work is the traditional Ukrainian Petrykivka style. It was done on a white background, but I wanted to change the background and give it a rich yellow. I created it as a complement. If you look closely, you will see small flowers that give expression to the background, as if rich and inflated. I liked the result. And the third, last work, it is not even ten days old. Very richly colorful Petrykivka. These are my last works that I wanted to show you.
Modern drawing made in the style of Petrykivka painting by Natalia Stasiv-Garko
It may seem that time is unchanged. More than six months have passed since the last publication. During this time, many events have passed that can be packaged in one word – change. The Chinese, when they want to wish something bad, say that you should live during changes. They make sense because this is the most uncertain time, which slows down any planning, postpones things indefinitely, interferes with meetings and postpones events. But what to do, when this happened to you. Therefore, I will briefly summarize my post.
I’m sure many people have found themselves in this state. Today I am only talking about the present tense. The large collection of wood paintings I created in the traditional Ukrainian style was shown in August and had both positive and negative responses. I may return to the positive ones, but I’ll dwell on the negative ones in more detail. This is my first time painting on wood. I have not done this before. If we approach the creation of the project technically, then its goal was to create mutually complementary objects that together would create the same composition.
Composition of the drawing, completed in Petrykivka style and presented for teaching drawing techniques in a book about Petrykivka painting
The critics felt that I did not perform the traditional Ukrainian Petrikovsky painting correctly, or to put it differently, in an original way. Well, although these critics do not know how to draw and have a superficial understanding, they decided to consider me a failure. I am not defending myself and I am not going to argue. But thanks to the first women (Petrikovsky painting is known for the fact that the first women who mastered it were women who painted the walls of their houses) who painted cockerels, birds and flowers in an absolutely free style and decorated their houses with them, we now have a whole galaxy of artists of this style. If you look at the works of each of them, they are very different and they have in common the creation of a composition around several symbols.
One of the founders of Petrykivka painting in Ukraine Maria Prymachenko
Years have passed and this style, thanks to modern graphic programs, has reached absolute perfection. Moreover, many schools and courses have appeared that are ready to teach you this skill for your money. And yet, based on primary sources, I would advise you to remain tied to the three fundamentals of this painting – creativity, composition around symbols and image technique.
One of the famous paintings created by Maria Primachenko
That’s why I wished and wish today to everyone who is fighting for something, look at the primary sources and add your creativity – you will succeed.
Another painting by Maria Prymachenko, the founder of Petrykivka painting
The most interesting thing in learning any folk painting is mastering the principles. Although I will now be criticized again, the founders of this type of painting did not interconnect the composition; many objects of the composition were, as it were, separated. If you look at photographs of one of the first creators of this type of painting, you can see how stamping, the creation of separate drawings, which are located one next to the other.
Modern apartment decor in Petrykivka style
Two centuries ago, the goal for artists was to create a drawing that would create coziness in the room, protect it and harmonize with everyday life. Therefore, cheerful roosters and hens, wonderful bright princes with colorful plumage and long multi-colored tails, flowers of unusual shapes and color harmony appeared on the walls.
It was rural folklore, the art of the country people who decorated their homes. And today, Ukrainian artists have supplemented and improved it and created masterpiece collections of paintings, introducing this type of art into the traditional Ukrainian folk art. I’ll return to my collection. Drawing on wood requires its own skill. Technically, this is a more long-term work, and I was also required to create compositions on two chests, several kitchen boards, kitchen wooden shelves, souvenir wooden houses, Christmas tree decorations and sections of wood. I also tried painting on bags.
Photo from exhibition where was present my new collection.
I liked the combination of animals with modern elements. I took the cat as a symbol on the bag. That’s why I received criticism.
Another part of the collection among the exhibits on display
I’ll wait until the passion to ruin someone subsides and all this settles down and still, I’ll remain silent. Someone else criticized that I was too confident in myself. Friends, no. I hid, broke all my brushes, threw away the paints and am sitting waiting for something else to come to me. I would like your problems. Today I have donated several works to auctions and I believe that they will be useful. Tomorrow is not predictable for me, I will say one thing – only those who do not do and do not create are not mistaken. And I am again full of news and ideas, which I will tell you about in the next post. All the best
