Sadly, today there is no School of Watercolor Art in Ukraine, with an exception of faithful individual artists, one of whom is the Carpathian artist Tetiana Pavlyk who presented in Kyiv her solo exhibition “Waves of My Sorrow” based on the poems by Lesia Ukrainka.
This is Pavlyk’s third solo exhibition that takes place in the capital of Ukraine. Her works have also been exhibited in Lviv and her hometown Ivano-Frankivsk.
One can say that Pavlyk was formed as an artist in Lviv: in 1990 she graduated from the Department of Design and Book Illustration at the Ivan Fedorov Ukrainian Publishing Institute. At that time Pavlyk’s first solo exhibition – series of watercolors “Forest Song” based on the drama by Lesia Ukrainka took place.
Two great passions happened in life of the artist: love for watercolor and for Lesia Ukrainka’s poetry. They go amazingly well with each other. Both are delicate and feminine, being strong and indestructible at the same time. “It is a great honor for me as an artist to illustrate the works of Lesia Ukrainka. The book Waves of My Sorrow was published by the Kameniar Publishing House in 1991. Unfortunately, there have been no other editions of this book even though it was awarded the second prize at the national competition of publishing. Lesia Ukrainka’s poetry has always been close to me. I was fascinated with her philosophy when I was still a child during my training at the art school,” told Tetiana PAVLYK.
Watercolor is often used as an additional technique for sketches and designs. It upsets Pavlyk, who says that watercolor is often wrongly perceived as frivolous technique. Maybe that is why there are so few artists who work in this genre, because here you must be able to work quickly and at the same time you have to be extremely patient. By the way, watercolor is often called “supersensitive photo.”
“In the 1980s watercolor was a very fashionable and popular technique,” said art critic Lilia KHOMYCH. “Now artists do not use it as often. Transparency is the main feature of watercolor and its main value. It makes watercolor painting light. Mixing paints is a very important thing for any watercolor artist. In a painting the artist gets a certain color by using one shade over another, already dry layer.”
Pavlyk uses author technique in watercolors. Her principle is based on the property of water to dissolve paint in it. When she is working, the paper should be wet all the time and, therefore, she has to be really fast because there is simply no time to ponder over every stroke of a brush – this is the main difficulty of the process.
Pavlyk is an active participant of international and national exhibitions, contests, and open-air painting sessions, but she also often attends the photography sessions. This year the artist has participated in Den’s 14th Photo Competition. You can see her photo Sonechko at this year’s photo exhibition.
Paintings created by Pavlyk can be read as poetry, but often watercolor tells its own story. Just listen carefully.
Exhibition based on Lesia Ukrainka’s poems “Waves of My Sorrow” will be open until November 14 in Kyiv at 20, Esplanadna Street on the ninth floor. Admission is free.
Photo replicas provided by Tetiana PAVLYK
