When the Thread Does Not Break
There are rare celebrants of jubilees who, instead of receiving presents, give out generous gifts to all around them, for they share nothing but the divine gift of their own talent. Heartfelt sixtieth birthday greetings came to Nina Sayenko, Meritorious Performer of Ukraine, member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine, the National League of Folk Art Masters of Ukraine, member of the European Textile Association, and a charming and amiable lady.
Wide is the circle of those who know her: artists, academics, public figures, publishers, researchers of art, journalists, i.e., all who have dealt with her. She will find for each not only a piece of proper and necessary advice but also some special heartwarming words. Once you have met her, you are inclined to informally chat with her about life, art, and, so to speak, about the weather. Her record is impressive: more than 200 pieces of monumental and decorative art inside and outside Ukraine, almost the same number of articles on art studies in periodicals and books, participation in the establishment of museums, organization of conferences, exhibitions, festivals, and many other things.
Where does this slender and active lady draw the strength to do what could be in fact a job for a dozen giants? Only a great cause, with bright prospects and deep roots in the past, can supply the vital energy to feed this daily, eternal, and unobtrusive care about the Fatherland’s destiny, and glorious achievements in art. An artist and a public figure, Ms. Sayenko inherited a high-flying sentiments and a profound understanding of national culture from her father, People’s Painter of Ukraine Oleksandr Sayenko.
The master thus speaks about her childhood in Borzna, Chernihiv oblast, “Once on a summer morning, when I was about to run to the riverside, Daddy asked me to help him restore the frieze A Ukrainian Village which was kept in the wings during the war and some of whose fragments had peeled off due to moisture. It was for the first time that he asked me to do such a thing. This was the beginning of my Sayenko university’.” This was the organic way the mystery of beautiful creation was being handed down, literally from generation to generation. Oleksandr Sayenko was thus giving away a fraction of his heart, in which he had combined folk spirit and professionalism. There also are two other lines that closely intertwine in Nina Sayenko’s life: the education she received at Kyiv’s Taras Shevchenko National University helps her in theoretical art studies, while she draws inspiration from the heritage and wisdom of folk masters in her practical artistic endeavors.
When you look at her warm woolen carpets, you see blooming flowers and centuries-old fruit-growing orchards, hear the once forgotten and now revived Cossack songs and legends, see the rising sun and the glistening dew on green grass (A Cossack Ballad, Dawn, The Green Summer, St. John the Baptist’s Night, The Color a Fern Flower, Birds and Flowers). The golden straw, whose beauty the artist first came to know from her father who was the first to use it in monumental art, also radiates like a beam in the master’s hands. A straw-embedded picture wonderfully reveals the potential of this natural material for creating rhythmic compositions, especially those consonant with architectural and ornamental styles (The Golden Gate, The Tree of Life, An Ornamental Flower, A Rendezvous, Love Potion).
Nina Sayenko’s work have been exhibited in Canada, France, Australia, Germany, and many other countries which offered a warm welcome to the guardian of Ukrainian folk traditions and enriches them so generously with new works and themes, and is constantly improving the techniques of her creative work.
The Sayenko family tree continues to grow. The daughter, Lesia Maidanets, is a prominent artist who further develops traditions and has already created a host of interesting works, while little grandson Sashko is so far just showing promise. Singing songs and talking, Nina Sayenko and her daughter have woven more than one carpet, they organized a studio for hearing-impaired gifted children... The master is determined hand her rich spiritual heritage down to the next generation in order not to break the thread that links the past with the future in the development of our state. So let this cause fill her with renewed strength!
