I congratulate everyone who is affected by this date on the holiday and wish you your faith. Let it be the current stimulus of your life. It was you, despite all the ups and downs of life over the past 2 thousand years, who returned hope and gave life. Despite wars, adversity, illnesses and epidemics. Despite the fear of being worn out, the fear of being destroyed, the fear of being misunderstood. You made those unexpected exits from situations and after you came life. New life. Today I will write little. I will simply put one of my paintings, which was created a long time ago, but I was archiving my works and raised it. I admired it for a long time. I love this unique, author’s work of mine. And I love my works when I paint with oil paints. Enjoy
It is difficult to tell you in advance how the coming week will turn out. Today a warning was announced about very strong winds in our area, which will be accompanied by heavy snowfall. They ask to prepare for possible power outages. This is not usual for our area, but attempts have been made in past years. This means that it is impossible to predict what will happen tomorrow. About 8 years ago in the area I told you about, Midland, a huge hurricane passed, which destroyed almost the entire city and after which that area was recorded as an area of strong winds. But I am talking about something else, it is combined with surprises and unpredictability, but still more manageable. Today about my book. About my first book, published last year. I keep a diary and described how the book appeared and why. In September, my children’s book about the history of the fleet appeared in my hands. I celebrated its appearance with all my friends and I am glad that they liked it. This became my transition from one type of activity to another. I am happy and proud of it. And I have not stopped. Now I am preparing more, several children’s books at once. I hope that they will be published as planned, by autumn. I will allow myself to be a little smart and tell you my observations – while we are young, we search for ourselves, try and reject partly everything that was created and collected by the previous ones. And then, when we become wise and old, we combine knowledge and supplement it. This is how I see all those who create something new, who improve and transform their existence. In the last decade of my life, I cannot live without books, without the knowledge contained in books. Although before that, I was interested in film scripts and video images. A book can amazingly convey the time in which a person lived. And just a few posts ago, I described how Persia was created Masnavi by Rumi.
This is not only a book – a sacred scripture of the laws of life, but also funny wise stories, giving an example of an easy but instructive attitude to one’s existence, to the meaning of life and to the relationship between people.
This is the most important thing I want to convey to you.
When I came home after this unique performance and excitedly began to share my impressions with my husband, he listened attentively, did not interrupt and with his characteristic Eastern wisdom at the end of my story answered:,,This is possible only in Toronto” Well, of course, I fully share his words, but I also have my own additions – such a unique work has survived and today we saw it thanks to The Toronto Consort, people who preserve the oldest works and pass them on to us, revive historical masterpieces, help to see the life of past generations through musical prism.
Thank you Daniel Taylor.
Thank you Emma Kirkby
Thank you for its exellence in the performance of medieval,renaissance and early baroque music.
12th century. Today we will talk about it. What is wonderful and surprising is that literally my previous post talked about the same period, but in Persia, in the East. And today I am publishing about another place – about Europe in the 12th century. Yesterday, somehow I came across my thought that in the 12th century the church was strong over society and dictated its own rules. People were looking for a way out of their life’s troubles and where then they covered themselves with it, somewhere in the opposite direction of the church they acted. In Europe, a cleavage was already coming. (Yesterday I said that the cleavage occurred in the 15th century, and we were just talking and my interlocutor decided to watch it later, whether it was so. It turned out that I was right, in the middle of the 15th century a dissent occurred, which changed the traditional framework of rules, the secession of Catholicism, Orthodoxy.) But let’s still talk about GRIGORIOUS_THE HOLY SINNER himself.
I should retell the plot a little, because no matter how much the woman is the cause of all the misfortunes in this work, Gregorius still remains the main character and the misfortune of the whole story.
A young girl sins with her brother before her wedding. This causes her to become pregnant. She hides the pregnancy and gives birth in complete secrecy in a monastery, after which she goes down the aisle. The child is dressed in silk clothes and sent down the river with God in a small boat with a note. A fisherman finds him, brings him to a church official, who leaves the child, asks the fisherman to raise him and helps raise the child as a servant of God. The mother gets married, but three days after the coronation, her husband and her brother die. She mourns them and buries them. After 17 years (I am interested in this chronology, it is different from ours, I guess) the boy grows up and becomes the main priest in this area. He needs to get married and his wife becomes his… mother (he and she feel some kind of love and closeness)
Being intimate, the mother sees the signs of her son and asks about them, she understands that in front of her is her son and tells him about it. He is confused, depressed and killed. He runs away from her, comes to the fisherman, and decides to go to the hermits, where he spends 17 years in the wild nature (again this date).Gregorius throws the key into the sea and says that when the key is found, he will return (very popular for those times). According to the rules of the time, Paul takes the place of the missing priest and asks three servants to find out and understand what happened to Gregorius.
The messengers come to the fisherman, and the old man treats them to his catch – a big fish. When he cleaned it for them – he found a key in the fish’s belly. It was a sign, and they went to the mountains to look for the hermit. They found him alive, but changed, wild and angry, aggressive. They asked him to come back and showed him the key. They went to the city, carrying the news of the living Gregorius. Three days later the monk returned to the city, which greeted him with greetings, singing and dancing. He returned to the rank of Pope.
His mother came to him, having learned that he was alive. They returned to love, began to live together and even had two heirs.
About the beautiful tales in the form of songs, created in the 12th century.
Sequentia-a series of musical narratives performed by three vocal artists @BenjaminBagby ,@jasminaCrncic and @LucasPapenfusscline
The wonderful trio of vocalists performed the story in German and the originality of the performance is a tribute to the work of Benjamin Bagby, who created this kind of innovative musical storytelling and has been transmitting it for almost 50 years since 1977, nurturing a generation of young performers and touring the world. He created more than 30 recordings spanning the entire Middle Ages(including the complete works of Hildegard von Bingen),film and television productions of medieval music drama.Today I am telling you about a work created in the 12th century.
And this kind of work is called medieval theatre and is a genre of mystery, farces and masks, as well as English cyclical dramas.
Medieval theaters originate from the Roman Empire (again Rome, the Roman Empire. How much the Roman Empire gave us – it left its notes, its traces and affected our lives for a long time, although it itself fell apart and today it is no longer there). From the time of the Roman Empire until the 15th century (when a lot changed in Europe, including what I wrote above) The themes of medieval theaters were always religious themes. Modern interpretation or traditions of medieval performances are plays of mummers, which are staged in the USA and Britain. The parade of mummers takes place every New Year in Philadelphia and is considered a folk parade. But as we can see, it is a continuation of the traditions of medieval performances.
Medieval plays also include mysteries, which are often performed in Britain. Our play is an example of a morality play as a types of drama from Middle Ages.
But how can I tell you now or describe everything that happened on stage yesterday – after all, you have to see it and it is so beautiful and refined that everything that I described to you above is very subtly told to us, the spectators in the hall, with the help of the vocalists playing the harps.
A very beautiful combination of musical harmony, playing instruments and narrative performance.
An hour and a half in one breath. And it seems that we know what will happen now, and again a curl and another story that captivates and makes you listen and follow the story.
I consider myself lucky to have listened and been a spectator of this evening.
Before the performance there was a lecture where we were told about Gregorian chant .This knowledge goes deep into the Roman Catholic origins of the church.Greagorian chant is named after St.Gregory I(590-604) it was collected and codified.
Harmonic monophonic texture makes medival music unique.
Have I filled you with intrigue? Whenever possible, when you see posters about medieval performances, go without hesitation and enjoy this performance. I wish you good luck
A trip always leads to new discoveries and wonderful impressions and long memories. And now a week has passed, the road dust has settled, my thoughts are already cold and I return to those days with memories.And everything was cool.Just a trip to Huronia. For you this is something, then I will reveal a secret. This is a peninsula adjacent to the large Lake Huron (by the way, the name of the lake comes from the same name as the peninsula). The lake is divided by the borders of America and Canada. On the other side is Michigan, and from here we, the residents of Ontario.
Previously, and this was 400-500 years ago, this neighborhood was intense. Then somehow the activity died down, then in the 1900s everything was actively revived again and looking at the photographs – there were huge ships with tourists, grain and wood were transported on ferries, cars and equipment were brought here. Ladies with lace parasols from the sun walked along the shore, cars with mustachioed men in tailcoats with canes drove. And a railway went to the main desks. Interesting? That’s great. It all started with the fact that I looked in one word in Wikipedia. And word for word, and off we went. I could not sleep and when we went to the peninsula, I wanted to see everything with my own eyes.
We decided to visit two cities, namely Penetanguishene and Midland.
Penetanguishene is town in Simcoe Country first appears in records in 1882, but probably has an older history due to the terrain. The city’s buildings descend from the mountain to Lake Huron and has a beautiful harbor, where I already wrote above, at the end of the 18th-19th centuries life was booming. Most of the residents were from Quebec and French, so even now the main part of the city has French or French-named streets. Very little remains of the former city now, since its inhabitants are less than 10,000. Once this city received its name from the Wyandot Indians and means a place where the sand quickly grinds or land of the while rolling sands.
I didn’t see it there, as well as the lake itself, since in mid-January there are huge mountains of snow and the lake freezes. It turns into a road for snowmobiles. And the snowmobile traffic is active. Apparently, the snowfalls are heavy and people get tired of removing snow near their houses. The snow falls constantly and sometimes in waves, forming blizzards. The time I was there – gray clouds of snow, snow sometimes in flakes, sometimes in a solid wall. Then the locals leave their cars near their houses, dig out a small path from their house to the main road, where the snow is removed perfectly. And they go using snowmobiles. Reliable, fast and cheap. So these are the routes and lively skating I found on the lake and on the pier, a frozen boat crashed into the ice, which was waiting for spring and warmth to ride tourists around the lake.
The city was famous and popular precisely when in 1793 the governor of Upper Canada visited it and saw that the place was strategic and decided to build a military base here. It was built and in 1813-1814 a railway was built there. Life in this area was very active in those years. It was a stronghold against attack by the Americans and was connected to another important city in this region – Berry.
It is difficult to even imagine now that there were powerful defensive structures, as history says, along the entire coast and even on the Wasaga beaches, where there are now a huge number of beaches and hotels.
The same story also writes that these defensive structures along with the ships did not stand for long and sank several years later.
Gradually, from the middle of the 19th century, this place ceased to be military, at the beginning of the 20th century it turned into a commercial and industrial one. Well, now it is dying, since the main income comes from tourists who come for a short Canadian summer and settle in hotels, relax, enjoy local parks and fishing. It is necessary to mention one more attraction – there are three islands near the city. Ferries go to these islands even today (though not now, everything is frozen). Indian families still live on the islands. I think that the movement of snowmobiles that I saw when I arrived at the harbor is the movement to the islands. I did not see a boat, and in such winter temperatures a ship cannot sail on ice. I read that there are ferries to the islands. One of the islands is the largest and it is closest to the city. We decided to go and see a tourist place called Discovery Harbour.
This place is located at the mouth of the harbor and has many restaurants and a famous local theater. But unfortunately they were closed. Apparently we chose the wrong time. However, there is a certain charm in this, when you arrive at such a time. This is that there are no tourists, few people and in the hotel a hot tub awaits you, in which you sit and watch the snow fall. The feeling is indescribable. The ratio of temperatures, the magic of water and the play of water with temperature. How can you forget this? And then just hot tea.
It is worth dedicating you, my dear bots and readers, readers-bots, to the past activities of the past month. The month was eventful and gave eventful results. In December, readers continued to get acquainted with my new book. I am ready to share it with you. Moreover, the book is now on sale online and anyone who is interested in history, who is interested in children’s literature, who loves educational stories for their children – this little book is for you.
If you are a resident of Canada, you can easily buy this book through the online store. Good choice.
Continuing with the topic, I would really like to tell you an interesting story that happened with me at one of the last book presentations. It was a presentation for parents with children. There were not many of them, among six families there was a very restless child who could not sit. Mom tried to calm him down, he kept breaking free and leaving, walking around the room and returning back, but not to her, but joyfully running to me. I interrupted the meeting, joked with him, picked up the baby in my arms and carried him to mom. He sat in her arms for literally a minute, broke free again. He ran across the hall and ran smiling past mom to me. This happened several times until I picked him up. And then a miracle happened. He calmed down and, sitting in my arms, carefully watched me and the people who had gathered in the hall. It wasn’t hard for me to hold him in my arms. The baby’s mother apologized profusely. She asked to give him to her. The baby was capricious and didn’t want it. At the end of the presentation, I always turn to the children and talk to them. And this time too. And when I asked: “What did you like most today?” The girl who was sitting in front stood up and pointed to the baby: “He” We all laughed together. Of course, the baby got his gift. I felt like a young mother. Oh, how difficult it is. So many years have passed since I was a young mother. I have already forgotten how difficult and responsible it is. It was an interesting meeting. As for the next meeting, it will take place in January, after the Christmas holidays. Follow the announcements
What happened is incredible. Using the computer, everything that was accumulated on the disk over the last 13 years of life in Canada was erased. There are two ways – to restore what we are working on and to start all over again. That’s how it happens. I have to publish my works that remained on the documents in this computer. But still, I draw great You can support me with just likes, comments or buy a painting that is on https://www.saatchiart.com/en-ca/. Find 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
The beginning of the new 2019 year inspired me to write about my paintings about winter.
You will immediately think that I love this topic. I live in Canada, where there is a lot of winter,more than 6 month in year. And I manage to draw winter. I often received prizes and exhibited my works at exhibitions or published them in publications. But I will disappoint you, this is one of my directions, but not the most beloved. I am very good drawing the winter.
Now those traditions of drawing, with which I started ,a little outdated. This is still the traditional East European school, the old Russian traditions
Over the years I began to move away from the primary methods of drawing. You will be able to see how my equipment has changed on the example of the exposed photos in this post. I am not an adherent of one theme and one style, one picture. I always want a new one. It is in my life I am fidget.
Proposed for your viewing paintings, this is a small part of my work. I don’t have many of them for a long time. They are in collections all over the world.
The paintings of my works below are still relevant. They are on sale in websites along with other paintings:
https://www.artfinder.com/helen-polishuk#/
https://www.saatchiart.com/helenpolishuk
https://www.artmajeur.com/helen-polishuk
http://helenpolishuk.com/
Already living in Canada,I created intresting collection of small paintings devoted to winter.
This is a lively collection filled with originality.
There are many things that show that I live in Canada. These are the buildings of houses and the landscape of nature.
I set up here to draw small pictures.
I will not say that it is special. I liked it.
Many critics say that on the contrary, it is harder to paint small paintings than big ones.
I will argue. It is easy for me to draw small paintings.
That’s just sometimes you have to repeat to remove the layer of paint, shade white.
Therefore, the painting is not created in one month, and sometimes it takes about a year to finish it. This is the process of highlighting more places in the painting.
Using this painting as an example, I show how applying a bleached layer several times gives a glow to the picture. It is like nourished with small bright lights. Very impressive!!!!!
The range of shades is wide, although the winter landscape is monotonous. This is not true in my collection.
I continue to look to my direction. And the rest of my work only complements what was said
I am glad to work for you and ask, look more often at my sites, read my posts, like and forward. Everything I do, I create for you, my dear friends…..
Today I will tell you about one photo.#onephotostory. Rather, it will be a comment about one photo. Or rather, it will be my tedious reasoning, which I publish here.
So here……..
If you are ready to read the monotonous thoughts of a woman, you are here.
Today I am not ready to prepare 6-7 pieces of photos , as I always do, by selection and publishing a post. Today, only one photo. Here it is. ……I am publishing it now….
What? You’re upset now. What is it?
Why? Well, what to do with this photo?
What do you want to write to us here?
Nothing. Take it easy. This is just my mood now.
Yes, it’s winter outside. Yes, it’s cold outside. Yes, everything has changed in color, since when I arrived on this land.))
It was green, warm, sunny. It became cold, frosty and monotonously gray.
In my mind the same color changing. It is not related to my mood. Not at all. I let go. I relaxed, not to suffer from the problems.
I came to the conclusion that the best condition now is to get relax in this situation. And I get it. I am extremely fruitfully working now to collect as much artistic material as possible,which I lack in Canada. I attend exhibitions held in Kiev in these months. I walk a few kilometers every day for healthy body. I meet people and new places.
I must say that the city is changing very quickly. It is an amazing city. I love Kiev. Kiev reminds me the sea. Imagine the surf………… This is a wave that is gaining strength. The wave rolls to the shore. So, for me, this city is always the same, sandy, gray shore.)) And the waves that roll on him are all sorts of changes, sometimes events, sometimes people, actions…… The waves are rolling. They are trying to change the shore, raking, washing away the sand. And the shore as it was stay……did not change.
My mood today is like this beautiful bench in this one photo. All white. But it is special white. Not completely white, with colorchanging. It is snow, winter and cold. And the bench, it’s me that this winter has covered with cold and snow. And whatever I wanted, no matter how I spun … I have to cover myself with this snow … and stand.
This my painting very soon will be exhibited at the spring exhibition in Toronto. It will be prepared and changed. It will appear geometric hieroglyphs as a symbol of the spring exhibition 2018.
We’ll talk today about this and other things that worry me.
Often, when we draw, we start drawing with lines, circles and waves. It connects into an image becomes a picture,painting.
If we enter our subconscious, we will understand an interesting discovery.
Imagine that we are drawing our codes, we draw unconsciously that the ancestors drew on rocks and stones, advanced from generation to generation.
Studying ancient wall inscriptions in Mesopathamia, Egypt, China and Ukraine, I came to the conclusion that this is the beginning of our art,our painting process))
Million repeating lines and circles, as a result, give an image of the picture, where, if you look closely, there are ancient hieroglyphs.
And has no meaning in which country or when this image appeared.The line is line,the waves is waves.
All the ancient rock carvings are almost identical in spelling and have one meaning:they carry their code, their continuation, their symbol to subsequent generations.
Most of them are narrated about hunting and victory over an animal, or about the life of a tribe, or about a crop or a crop failure.
In any case, something extraordinary that needs to be fixed and left for generations to remember.
And just art that stretched the thread from ancient times to modernity.In modern painting, it is easy to find an image, сreated by several hieroglyphs and reflecting the drawn image.
I draw some kind of inner line and meaning between drawing in the old days and modern. I see an absolute coincidence and similarity. As an artist, I always start painting, having the idea of something to portray or tell or leave for the next generation.
What amazed me was that, considering the paintings of contemporary or previous artists, you are always inspired by these paintings when you stop near they. Paintings impress with meaning or idea.It is true.
And this is that invisible discovery, that thread of connection between ancient writing and modernity. The paintings attract the eye.
And when you look at them carefully, you see both lines and waves and circles.
All the same simple symbols invested in our consciousness by our ancestors.
This, probably, and beckon us into artand it is intrigues .Always, somewhere tickles the feelings, plays with subconscious.
I want to show on this example.
There are women on painting.
To draw a female silhouette easily.
Women’s silhouettes are the smooth repetition of lines.
This is the image from Trypillian wall .This image is encrypted into the image of the bull’s head, carrying the code of the female body, wealth, procreation and full circle of life.
This is the code given to us in the generation with the symbol of the continuation of the genus, with the symbol of eternity and with the symbol of heritage. In wall paintings we find them in unchanged images))This symbol is preserved unchanged in modern painting and carries all the same meaning and idea. I now study a bit of ancient hieroglyphs and got the idea that time has not changed us. We remained the same, bearing the code of our life, our eternal existence. Maybe there are some modern changes that are very thin and sensitive to me. I followed this trend that, alongside the image of great battles and harvests, portrayed the beauty of a woman and her strength is present too.
The modern world has changed to a woman. And this is sad for me. I fill that.And this will affect our next generations. But I’ll tell you the next time))
