This method ceased to be used in the 14th century, but currently it is being revived. Instead of a usual palette the artist uses a wooden board, an electrical iron, and a dozen of wax pencils. The master experiments, works on improving of his author’s technique, which combines the application of many-colored stucco and etching.
“I took up hot wax painting or encaustic painting back in 2013. By the way, it’s the first painting technique in the history of humankind which dates back to Ancient Egypt. At that time no oil or tempera paints existed, only wax, which was melted, mixed with minerals for color, and used to paint on stone, canvas, and wood. Our first icons were wax painted. But after the oil paints were discovered in the 14th century, it has been forgotten,” Oleksandr PELESHKO says, “This is a complicated technique which requires a lot of efforts and time. I have modernized the method. Not to melt the wax with a scoop, I use a usual iron. It helps melt the wax pencils and create a picture, which looks like a 3D one. At first I apply the paint on a heated iron, and then on paper.”
Embossment is the main advantage of such work. One can touch the pictures, feeling every branch, flower, and image. But the master’s artwork include no less impressive works that are called “painting cuts” in the circles of Vinnytsia art critics. These canvases are executed in an author’s technique, sgraffito. Sgraffito is the most ancient technique, which is used on large spaces by application of many-colored plaster and scratchboard, a kind of etching. The artist combined these two techniques in miniature painting and invented a new author’s genre.
“When I was working on decorating of Yampil Local Lore Museum, I had to create an exposition of attack on the Yampil Fortress in the hall of national-liberation struggle. It took me a long time to find a way to recreate it. The walls were painted with green over water-emulsion coating. I scratched the picture on the exposition wall. It looked like an engraving,” the master recalls. “When I was studying at the Fedorov Printing Institute in Lviv, I started to work in this technique, applied water-emulsion paint and gouache in layers and engraved with the help of a needle. It was hard to find a recipe. After numerous attempts interesting works started to emerge. These are the only pictures I don’t sell.”
Peleshko has been teaching painting at Yampil Secondary School for over 20 years. Currently he is working at Vinnytsia College of Architecture and Construction. He is an active participant of open-air sessions of stonecutter sculptors. His sculptures have been placed at Busha Historical-Cultural Preserve, in the town of Soroky, and his paintings are used as illustrations in children’s books. The master’s artwork includes several hundreds of paintings executed in various techniques, which are stored in private collections all over the world. Oleksandr Peleshko is a member of the Association of Folk Masters of Ukraine; he has taken part in oblast and nationwide exhibits many times and is a winner of international competitions.
