Take Me Back to My Childhood

The artist Yevheniya Hapchynska says she is a happy person. Working in her own art studio one day, she created what she admits to having wanted to do for the longest time and what she believes is worth a lifetime’s work — a painting entitled “I Want It Like That.” This relatively simple canvas, as she describes it, invokes an unconscious recollection of barefoot childhood and green antiseptic on scabby knees.

An exhibit of this one painting by Yevheniya Hapchynska has opened at Kyiv’s Camera Gallery. It is entitled “The World Is There for Me to Love You” after the same-titled song by the Ukrainian singer Maria Burmaka. “The painting was born in December, and I have been hiding it from everyone since then,” says Yevheniya. She wanted it to “last” until the exhibit, because her paintings usually sell like hotcakes. Last spring the head of the A-BA-BA-HA-LA-MA-HA publishing house, Ivan Malkovych, joined the hordes of her ardent admirers. Malkovych, who was introduced to Hapchynska by their mutual friend, Burmaka, is a poet and publisher of quality children’s literature. He has offered Hapchynska a partnership: very soon (in the spring, according to rumors) the Ukrainian book world will see a new publication by Ivan Malkovych with illustrations by Yevheniya Hapchynska. The book is about a girl named Lisa, who travels in her imagination to the studios of the world’s greatest artists and “does very funny things there,” according to Hapchynska. Neither of them revealed what exactly is happening to the girl, but Ivan Malkovych hinted that it will be about “warming people with paintings.” Three more books by this creative pair are in the pipeline. The plots are a secret; what is known is that since Yevheniya Hapchynska will be providing the illustrations, we can hope for some happy endings.

The exhibit remains open until March 8.