The Small Country

A one-woman show by Lviv-based artist Olha Ishchuk- Volodarska is on display in the Art Salon of Interior Art on Andriyivsky uzviz.

Her painting is simultaneously romantic and unprotected, fantastic and touching. Each of the Lviv artist’s paintings contains a beautiful and slightly sad story about childhood, which is full of wonders or youth, differing from childhood only in that one more wonder adds to the others the miracle of love. Olha Ishchuk-Volodarska’s heroes are angels, living toys, fantastic beasts, young street musicians, and pensive lovers, all of them big-eyed, charming, and sad. This world of old Christmas postcards or Little Lord Fauntleroy seems to exist in some other dimension, space, and time. This is retro to some extent, but above all it is exotics, “a small country” that somehow managed to survive; where one can believe in mermaids and fairies without feeling even slightly embarrassed.