folkartwork

Published December 11th on DailyArtMagazine.com

In 1998, for the first time ever, Polina Raiko (1928-2004), a 69-year-old woman who had spent almost her entire life as a wife, mother, and farmer, picked up a paintbrush and began painting the inside of her home. Years after her death, her house became a folk art masterpiece and a source of strength and inspiration for Ukrainians being invaded by a country trying to erase its culture. Polina Raiko’s artwork today may be lost, but her story will, and must, continue to live on.

Only a few years later, in Southern Ukraine, you could walk around the Kherson region, ships coming in and out of the port city, rolling hills and farms, and see some lovely, friendly, hard-working locals. At some point, whether it was the whispers throughout the town or a gut feeling, you would wander around to a six-bedroom house with what appears to be a grandmother sitting down next to a fence with a painted dove. It’s hot, she’s not wearing any shoes, and as this eccentric woman invites you into her home, sitting nestled between two rivers with a giant walnut tree and grape bush out front, you can’t believe what you are about to see.

I’ve never seen Francisco de Goya’s Black Paintings, currently housed in the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, but I often wonder what it would have been like to walk into Quinta del Sordo and discover these intensely dark, intense, and haunting works of art painted directly on the walls of this villa. Would I be amazed? Would I be disturbed? Would I ever sleep again?