Silver lace of dream

The simplest pattern in landscapes and still lifes of Liudmyla Zado­rozh­na, a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine, turns into a solemn performance in which one can recognize a real creator: trees are speak­ing, herbs are aromatic, and wild flowers have absorbed the entire palette of seven-color rainbow and horizon.

At the exhibit the audience gets to a generous and open world: all the canvases are a real hymn to life, decorativeness, and rhythm together with unusual combinations of paints create festive mood. Nature in Zadorozhna’s pictures is full of exuberant summer blossom and sentimentality of autumn, versatility of fruit and colors, grown by warmth of the Earth and power of the Sun. Poetry is present in every work: this is not just a freeze-frame, taken from the whirl of life, but a self-sufficient world, which is se­parate and rich in nuances. It is not boring to view these pictures, because the dialog between painting and audience makes us immerse into a pleasant and quiet observation.

The landscapes were created like a “reality of myth” in which Liudmyla transforms the materiality of the world of nature, bringing it through the laces of indigo-violet. She has a story about the color: “When I was a child, I climbed on a stack in the evening and I saw before me the plums under the moonlight… some unperceivable color of plum and silver. I have been carrying it with me through my whole life.”

Poetry enriches reality. It is not specifics that are important for the artist; she needs to convey the state of soul, the very essence of a person. Hence metaphors in her paintings, as well as plunging into the surreally wonderful kingdom of color with its entire richest flexibility and deepness of purest tones. “Her creative work stands aside from the extremities of avant-garde experiments; she is faithful both to the school, and ingeniousness and sincerity of children’s impressions. Liudmyla Zadorozhna’s imagination is earthly, she does not invent something for the sake of impressive effect. This is what creates her artistic personality, talented, sincere, and open to the world,” considers Nina VELIHOTSKA, Ph.D. in Art History, who has been studying Zadorozhna’s creative work for a long time.

Liudmyla was born in the village Skybyntsi in Vinnytsia oblast, where since early childhood she was trying to depict the surrounding world in painting. Having chosen art as a profession, she graduated from the Kyiv School of Applied Arts, where her teachers were Yevhen Sviatsky, Anatolii Kazantsev, and Nina Han, as well as an art studio. Later she worked as a decorator at the Taras Shevchenko National Museum and simultaneously continued to study part-time at the department of gra­phics, Ivan Fedorov Ukrainian Printing Institute. Liudmyla was lucky to have wonderful teachers, Florian Yuriev and Valerii Lamakh. The fact of her being a student of these masters is proof that talented people attract one another.

After Liudmyla took an independent path, she cooperated with several publishing houses and children’s magazines. Her graphic works saw light in the publishing house Iskusstvo, magazines Maliatko and Soniashnyk, the Veselka Publishing House. However, free painting turned out to be so attrac­tive that she could not resist the oppor­tunity to paint whatever she liked, without looking at censorship. Since the beginning of the 1980s Zadorozhna got completely immersed in the world of author’s painting.

Among her works distinguishing is the series “Sednev Landscapes,” from Liudmyla’s favorite spot. Here she crea­tes a magnificent cycle, “In our home on our own,” about the unbreakable natural connection between nature and man, the unity of all living creatures. In its sense it is close to the series “Peace to our land,” about which Nelia Zablotska said to Liudmyla: “This is a masterpiece of philosophic understanding of the unity of man and nature, and the Universe. The healing sprouts of folk artistic traditions are exuberant in your painting. Namely through artists like you is Ukraine speaking to the world: Look what I am like!”