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Andriy Yalanskyi |
Andriy Yalanskyi's Profile |
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The Monet of Ukraine |
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It is not hard to see how Andriy Yalanskyi came to be an Honoured Artist of Ukraine. He has an assured grasp of the techniques of painting and an inborn eye for the quintessence of a subject. These qualities are offset in his pleasing compositions by an unerring colour register and a masterly way with sunlight. Yalanskyi is not trying to find an art that is new. He aims, through traditional means, to see anew each subject that he selects. Every picture sings with freshness. The vibrancy of his palette gives his works a brilliance that almost dazzles and a texture that you want to touch. This immediacy implies a virtual dimension of smell. A breathless scent wafts from the full blooms in Ukrainian cottage gardens on hazy midsummer days (Front Garden [below]; Summer Evening; Sunny Day).
A rich aroma of ripe fruits mingled with manure explodes from a vignette of fowl in the pumpkin crop (Chickens and Pumpkins). Scenes from the English hunt evoke dawn hornblasts, freshly upturned tussocks, and the whiff of damp leaves in early autumn (The Hunt; Morning Run ; After the Rain). Mists are an effective generator of atmosphere. They at once conceal and reveal details, to suggest a much bigger picture (Morning, Seven O'clock Morning Mist; Foggy Morning on Windermere [above]). Yalanskyi's country scenes, with or without human figures, possess a witty element of anthropomorphism. The inclusion of animals, often barely adumbrated, is unfailingly endearing and enriches the traditional landscape motif. A snowdrift is brought to life by a half submerged black cat, resolutely marking out a path of pawprints (Pawprints in the Snow).
The sheer iciness of the earth's winter crust is inferred from the web-footed watch of grazing geese (Geese in the Snow [right]). Pigs line up expectantly at the trough (Feeding Time). The roles of horses and hounds at the hunt are captured in all their ritual complexity. Flowers may be botanically ordered (Lily Pond at Dalmain House [page 17]) or exuberantly disordered (Wild Flowers [page 39]; Hollyhocks [page 37]), but grow with a spirited vitality, expressing their individual will to thwart the efforts of horticulture. Andriy Yalanskyi is a Professor at Kyiv Academy. He is a figure of distinction in the Ukrainian artworld. Yet his work alone betokens the true artist. Yalanskyi is interested in life. His pictures exude it. His inspiration depends upon it. We respond to that inspiration, which is in harmony with nature itself. |
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