For artist Yurii Kamyshny this is already the fifth trip to this sunny and exotic country. After wandering the length and breadth of India barefoot the artist came back to his native land filled with inspiration.
“I have traveled to 27 countries of the world, including 5 in the South America. But it was India that amazed, captured me, and made me fall in love with it,” admits Yurii KAMYSHNY. “It is the country of smells, sounds, feelings, and, what’s important for me as an artist, full of colors and variety. Clothes, behavior, naive questions of Indian people, extraordinary nature brings out amazement in you, which has no boundaries and makes tears well up in your eyes. In Dehli I visited the Akshardham Temple (it is built with marble, gold, with precious jewelry, magnificent pavilions of wax figures, boats that float down the river Lethe with scenes of Hindu life, even with the sounds, smells, colors, and Hindus’ bare feet shuffle). I walked all over India barefoot too – from the Himalayas to the southernmost point of Kanyakumari, the two coasts of the country and all of its inside territory. I have seen the country in different ways: different clothes, traditions, and colors of skin. The West Coast is the center of tourism and on the East Coast India appears in all its pristine beauty.
“I can draw parallels between Ukrainian and Indian villages. Modern Hindus in character and behavior remind me of our grandparents. They haven’t lost the true things! The national flowers of Indians are calendula, sunflower, daisies, and mallow, which they prefer, and women decorate their hair with those flowers. Even the colors (red, blue, golden-orange, and others) that dominate in sari are as well presented in Ukrainian national clothes. But the main thing is the feeling, melodiousness, and emotions…
“Blood of various ethnicities flow in my body, however, Ukrainian prevails. It began back in my childhood when we would go to visit my dad’s family in the village. There I lived in a house with a thatched roof, under which sparrows would tweet, and in winter time I would sit there near the stove. In India I drew a hut from Verkhivnia because it is closer to me, because ordinary huts are temples of ordinary people, the fire of birth, death, and culture in general.”
