How to describe the period from February 13 to 18, 2025. Toronto. Canada? In a word – it continues. There is little joy in the city from the snow, everything is buried in solid snowdrifts. Even cars did not rise to shovel them on Sunday. If the weather spoils us and more snow falls this week, then even a very active snow digger will give up from the impossibility of clearing the paths. On the night from Sunday to Monday, some crazy guys decided to drive along an uncleaned street. It all ended with one in a pickup truck flying up a mountain of snow across the road, breaking all the cables and scattering parts of the car. Removing it was also problematic, since it is difficult for cars to leave and arrive at the location. And at that moment I noticed that the cars were driving carefully along the open lane. And not one, not one stopped to help remove the moron from the hill! We must understand the harsh, specific character of our inhabitants.
Then a gusty wind blew and a small plane at the airport landed on the roof, flipping over and breaking its wings. How can they allow landings in such weather? And perhaps this is not the best time for flights. But today the sun is shining blindingly, cold, provocative. We fed the sparrows that spend the winter in our trees. The birds pounced on the food, not even waiting for us to move away. They already trust us. Weather-tested))
I am disabled in one eye, I am trying to pull myself out of idleness and painted. All the critics around me, discussing my work, say that I am great at landscapes. Winter ones, for example. So I am trying. I want to sweeten my condition with something. I am giving you a new work – Winter landscape You will see from it how much I miss painting with oil paints. Still, oil cannot be replaced by acrylic. And in the summer, when there is an opportunity to paint with oil paints in the open air, I will return to my favorite technique. In the meantime, for you – winter landscape
A snow storm is covering Toronto. This is the fifth wave in a week or the third in a day. Another 10 cm of snow is expected. During my stay in the city, I have seen such a strong snow storm for the first time. Today is Sunday and the city is frozen. Everyone is in their homes. It is impossible to go outside, since in most cases, the roads have not yet been cleared, walking is problematic. Many exits from houses are covered and there are no cars in the city. Everything has stopped. Only beautiful snow-white snow falls and falls. As if the cloud above the city is full of holes and sheds its precious feathers. Everything turns soft white. Snowdrifts are already taller than a person. And if two weeks ago, higher, north of Toronto there were snowdrifts of this height, now they are in Toronto too. And what about further north? Strength to city residents to have enough strength to clear these snow drifts. Without snow removal machines it is impossible to do without. The snow is becoming sticky and heavy and it is becoming increasingly difficult to remove it manually. Just yesterday, cars from the city came and helped, cleared it and threw salt. The next thing after this will be a frost of -20 this week and after that – the melting of this snow. That is why we dig out houses – so that houses do not get flooded when the snow melts. That is why these convenient plazas are made in cities – so that in case of cataclysms you can drive in and have a post office, shops and cafes in one place. Now I understand the convenience of building cities in America.
Snow Storm
7” x 5 ”
Acrylic on canvas
Feb 2025
The snow keeps falling and falling. The beauty that you watch from the window. Rare cars try to drive along the uncleaned roads. Everyone is hiding and waiting – just a few more hours and you can go out, dig up, clean the paths around the house and the entrance to the houses. Just a few more hours. And then you have to dig up so that the water doesn’t get into the house, and then you have to sprinkle the paths with sand so that it’s not slippery. Our Canadian winter is in full swing
Creating a new project with the onset of the new year, these are very significant changes in my career and in my life. What influences the final result and how all the work changes in connection with the new project, it is very difficult to talk about it a lot, and even more difficult to explain.
In previous years, I got used to keeping silent and doing my job, showing you the result of the work. And this always hid the colossal expenditure of time on the production of the product. The final result came out as something easy to do, not requiring large expenses and time. But with the complication of my tasks, I have to abstract myself from life, close myself off in order to produce more and more, create and implement my plans. That is why today I am simply telling you that I am alive, healthy and very busy.
All my free time, which is very little, I devote to my family, children and walks. This helps to distract myself and, conversely, creates an atmosphere of community and comfort.
a small drop from future projects I am posting for you now. Please use all iso-images that are published on this site as original works and repost only with the mention of my name. Any attempts to use images otherwise will be considered a violation of copyright.
new works by the artist Helen Polishuk in her favorite style
I really want these warm sunny days already. No matter how warm this winter was, it was not sunny and the lack of energy and warmth affects the mood of people in Toronto. However, I always repeat that everything passes. And after the cloudy days, warm days will come. And the seeds planted will break through the cold ground into the ground. And the gardens will bloom and the ringing singing of birds will flow, which notify about their offspring. And we can live. After all, a new day is wonderful. A new video with the latest Petrykivka for you, my dears.
If you don’t already know my most active page, here it is. It contains all the latest news from the world of my creativity and painting. Let’s move on
I am pleased to announce all the changes that accompany this month.
Sometimes you shouldn’t stir up the past, even if it’s not that long ago. The page is closed. We live and work. Announcement and planning for the coming months.
Not everything in our lives is so neglected, so now an announcement of news from me. Firstly, I want to congratulate everyone who reads me on International Mother Language Day.
Still, why celebrate it? If humanity had not created writing and language for communication, we would hardly have had global communication between nations today. And although we are all representatives of different nationalities today, we are united by knowledge of the English language, which the majority of us speak. And if we don’t know this language, then our circle of communication is greatly narrowed. Of course, we can use the services of translators, but this makes communication more difficult and difficult. Therefore, I only welcome learning new languages as an opportunity to expand my abilities. The past week was very active and I can’t boast to you that I painted or exhibited anything in galleries. I don’t have enough energy and time. I’ll try to catch up and present you with new works.
My immediate plans include a return to icon painting and the final stages in the production of icons. An announcement of these actions will be coming soon. After the seminar that took place last week, I am preparing to submit my visions for planning assistance and developing art in my city. Here, I would be happy to listen to your ideas. You can send me and enter into a chat with me on the FB page
https://www.facebook.com/helenpolishukart
where I have been publishing my work for the last two years. Please, I will be glad. Believe me, I check and respond to emails on that page.
The next point is that I received a lot of offers, both related and not to the last year of my activity. And this is both the creation of films and the organization and implementation of projects. Will I continue them in the future? Let’s take a look, study the offers and choose what suits me and what I need.
Still, the emphasis is on completing the creation and printing of the book and continuing to study the history of art and searching for points of joint projects in this direction. The choice is aimed at developing programs and projects in this area and related.
The next thing I continue to be interested in is the creation of new forms of selling works from creative people. Well, something that has not yet been created. This is where I am interested in the geniuses of our planet and their clubs. After all, I already emphasized at the seminar that creative people are divided into (my opinion) two groups. The first group is absolutely creative people who cannot sell. They can only create. There are many of them. They are passionate about the creation process. And that’s all. There are always such people someone must support and sell their product. It could be an organization, a gallery, a restaurant or a government agency, anyone. Believe me, this is a big win, you can live and make money on this, and an example of this is the same Van Gogh or Picasso, and even Mozart , who during their lifetime did not sell enough, but created a lot. And now their works are wonderfully used by their heirs and generations. Second people are managers of their creative self.
Unfortunately or fortunately, there are fewer such people and they can be called blacksmiths of their idea, their craft.
They create, analyze, select, study, accumulate and implement. So it’s no longer a secret for a modern artist that it’s simply impossible to live off drawing alone.
Today you need to work at a surviving job and then relax and draw. And what’s new is that the artist himself must now learn to have many computer skills in order to be able to sell and create himself.
Now we look ten years into the future, the conditions of survival will become even worse. And all this is due to the rapid development of digital.
I am optimistic about these next ten years, because I don’t need any more for my activities, then it will become more and more difficult for me to manage myself. That’s what I’m leading to? I’m leading to the fact that my stage of accumulating my artistic works has almost passed and I am pleased to enter the period of implementing these works, working on transferring my skills to students. And here is a new announcement. I continue my mentoring work. This is not only icon painting, which I mentioned above. This is also the creation of maser box offices and workshops.
And the last announcement.
Since I have already entered the senior category, I will be happy to celebrate my last visit.
On February 21st, I hosted monthly Seniors’ Advisory Group meeting where I learned a lot of interesting and important things for me as a resident of Etobicoke.
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
What I feel when I open my site after six months of quarantine to write a post?
Zeroed
This is the name of my new work, which I share with you After spring 2020 with quarantine?with disrtoy in futures plane,we will not be able to live as before. As the main thing, we are motivated by caring for the family, the observance of today and the recognition that everything must be treated with distrust
What’s new in my angels paintings?
The background of the paintings has become darker. I express not transparency, hopelessness, anxiety This is the background of ourselves, me too.
My signature still at the corner in lower right as before
I continue the 2020 cycle about angels If the previous pictures are interesting, you can find them on the fb page : https://www.facebook.com/helenpolishukart
If you are interested in cooperation with me and online exhibitions of my works, write
helen.polishuk@gmail.com
Unfortunately,email on my site does not work and I am working on its restoration
Due to financial costs that are difficult to maintain and pay, I am thinking of closing the site. If you want to help in its content, I will gladly accept it. Email me about it.
As I already reported, this painting refers to post-quarantine paintings dedicated to angels and is called, “Zeroed”
,,Zeroed,,(2020)
materials: oil on canvas
Size: 5’x7′
100% original with my signature
I am pleased to receive feedback from you,my readers.
I am pleased to receive your feedback from you in,,COMMENTS,, I always read all the reviews Now there is a lot of work to be done, about 5 thousand of them have accumulated together with bots…and its waiting for read
I promise to read and answer to all readers of my blog Really looking forward to hearing from you comments and stories, how are you doing
At the end of the year, we always summarize the past . Now it’s time to show and analyze the past year. As a whole, it is much more successful for me then 2018 year.
I participated in several exhibitions and it was successful.
I’m talking about my work and participation in exhibitions.
I have already gained strength again to leave the Toronto with a large exhibition next year. I accept invitations from you )) worldwide . I am interested in exhibiting my new works, getting to know artists and seeing new cities in the world. I hope that next year it will come true. If you have any suggestions, send me email here.
I know that you really like my movies about Toronto art shows and exhibitions. Films where I show various types of fine art presented at exhibitions in Toronto. Therefore, I again uploaded by here the last film I edited, which presents various works by Canadian artists from several exhibitions.
This is a wonderful work done by acrylic and/or oil.
I tried to show you the versatility of the work. I like that all the techniques of the artists are mixed here in one exhibition. The exhibitions shows as rich, heterogeneous.
It must be emphasized that the organizers of the exhibitions gave artists the freedom to carry out their designs. I think you will notice it.
I will continue to try to publish more interesting films about Toronto exhibitions more often. Yours
