UKRAINIAN VILLAGE – By day, Roman Vovk is a house painter. At night, he paints detailed and compelling canvases.
“I’m a firefly,” Vovk said while describing some of his nighttime productions.
Vovk has 45 oil canvases on display through the end of the year at the Ukrainian National Museum, 2249 W. Superior St., to commemorate his birthday last month. The show’s title, “55,” is eponymous with Vovk’s age, and the exhibition features realist paintings that romanticize his homeland of Ukraine.
Paintings of the freedom-loving Cossacks, adventurers who roamed much of modern-day Ukraine in the 16th-18th centuries, are part of the collection. A painting titled Courier features a sole Cossack galloping on horseback across a barren field.
The Cossacks had formed a quasi-democratic state during that time.
“You’ll see many paintings of Cossacks,” said Vovk, who immigrated to the United States in 1999. “To me, they embody Ukraine’s fighting spirit for liberty,” he said, referencing Russia’s war against his homeland.
Interspersed among the paintings are idyllic landscapes, like Spring in the Carpathians, of the picturesque Carpathian Mountains that hug western Ukraine — where Vovk grew up in the foothills of the Ivano-Frankivsk region.
Definitive brushstrokes in these paintings underscore Vovk’s Impressionist influence. A Date features a young couple spending time in a rural setting, yet the background of straw-thatched roofed houses dominate the scenery.
“I use thick brush strokes,” Vovk said. “It comes across as what the Impressionists do. It’s also a take on socialist realism,” the principal style and doctrine of Soviet art.
Vovk’s clever use of colors that don’t over-exaggerate add vibrancy to the cultural scenes. His still lifes, mostly floral, feature the flowers commonly grown in Ukraine: sunflowers and poppies.
The sunflower is Ukraine’s national flower. Kyiv was the world’s largest sunflower oil producer until the Russian invasion in February 2022.
“I get inspiration from my land, country, from my soul … and the work of other artists,” said Vovk, who said he paints in other styles but decided to showcase realistic art in this exhibition.
Several works have biblical themes, such as Adam and Eve and the Temptation of St. Jerome. Vovk’s independent drive is also visualized in an opera scene he painted from Georges Bizet’s “Carmen,” whose heroine is an iconic free spirit.
Vovk’s paintings, although romantic and rooted in folklore, carry the spirituality and continuity that art can offer. When asked to describe the array of art on display as a whole, he said somewhat quixotically, “Art is life. It will save the world.”
Asked about his artistic techniques and practices, Vovk said, “It all depends on the state of my soul. … Some [pieces] get painted quickly, some take longer. … Art is a process.”
All paintings on display are on sale for $400-$10,000. This is Vovk’s fifth show at the Ukrainian National Museum, among more than a dozen throughout the United States. He has also exhibited artwork in Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada.
The museum’s collection showcases every facet of Ukraine. It includes embroidered attire, woven textiles, ceramics as well as the art of elaborately painted Easter eggs (pysanky), a practice found in ancient Persia all the way into the Balkans but still practiced in Ukraine.
“The fine arts collection consists of some 500 paintings, drawings, graphic works and sculptures by noted Ukrainian artists who worked in Ukraine, Europe, the United States and elsewhere, primarily in the 20th century,” according to the museum’s website.
The “55” exhibition will be open at the Ukrainian National Museum through the end of the year. For more information and museum hours, visit the museum website.
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