Tag: artist life

March

Helen Polishuk

….Don’t quarrel with nature, she knows what she’s doing….

from the exhibition

It is no coincidence that I chose my quote for this post.
Look how sunny and warm it is on the first day of March. I want to believe that this weather will remain and help nature come to life and bloom.
In nature, everything is natural. After the cold comes warmth, after flowering the fruits ripen, after the harvest, nature sheds its leaves and asks to give peace and rest to the trees before the cold. Prepare for death naked. Winter comes and the trees meet it naked, ready for renewal. Winter passes, heat for plants, the state of renewal comes with the first warm days of spring. And so this cycle repeats every year.

We also experience these cycles if we listen to nature. If not, and we are blind and deaf, then we lose a lot in the wrong cycle of life.
And you need to feel this cycle. You need to feel that after the strong, heavy magnetic elemental days of February, the gentle, cat-like days of March come. Even if it’s one day longer this February, then March 1st came and the weather changed completely.
Just yesterday evening, at sunset, I managed to notice the unusualness of the clouds on the horizon. They were curly, small, bluish-gray multiple clouds, densely standing in several lines on the horizon, like a flock of lambs on a soft pink background. The combination of these colors was unusual. Such a sunset too unusual.
“It will probably still be cold tomorrow,” I thought.
And only when I woke up today from the rays of the sun that appeared in my eastern window, I realized that, as always, spring has come. And it has come firmly, showing us that March will be warm.
Well.
Let it be .

So much hope for renewal, for blossoming and warmth.

May March bring more love and understanding.

We will clean our houses, put our gardens, lawns, and vegetable gardens in order to plant a good harvest.
And I will start a bunch of new projects that attract me.
One of them, but it’s more of a continuation than a beginning. It opened yesterday. It’s friendly to me

ROOTS which was open on the last day of February in Cloverdale Mall,Etobicoke.

I wish success to all the participants in this exhibition. I am pleased to see both familiar and completely new artists among them. And regarding their creations, I am a fan..
I just always like painting, which feels free, like the creation of images that are inherent to the master without any pressures or restrictions, with characteristic experiments and departures from traditions. With their inherent brightness and contrast. That’s how it was now.
The exhibition will be held FEBRUARY 29-APRIL 11,2024 in partnership with QuardReal and present the 5th show of ROOTS’exhibition series.

This year-long exhibition celebrates the rich cultural diversity of Toronto.Ita fifth edition will feature eight incredible African Artists in celebration of Black History Month.

CHANGE

Helen Polishuk
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