Exhibit brings Ukrainian artists together

They came for economic reasons, for religious freedom, for family. And they brought their artistic expressions with them.

When the Soviet Union relaxed its grip on its states, Ukraine became independent. The country, nearly the size of Texas and with a population of about 50 million, began to forge a new history atop a centuries-old past.

It's a story bathed in tears, of a country absorbed by Russia in the late 1700s, a country riven by famine in the 1920s and 1930s, and, recently, by tumultuous presidential politics.

The six artists of "Ukraine in America" met in the United States as a result of the upcoming show. They came from different regions of Ukraine, from different aesthetics, different politics. They are finding their way here, and their art bears the imprint of both their native land and their adopted home.

"We're bringing people together in a new country that come from diverse backgrounds in an old country," said Carol Harkins, who curated the show, "to share and to experience and to talk, to discover. That's what my hope was."

Harkins is the director of the Point Elliott Art Center in Mukilteo, where the show will open Saturday. Here's a look at the artists:

• Oleksiy Kovalenko often responded to events in his homeland with a painting.

His "Chernobyl," for example, is a dark cubist vision of the 1986 nuclear-plant disaster, with a pregnant woman in the foreground of disaster. Another painting by Kovalenko portrays himself as a lonely old king, sitting in a chair in an empty town. A spirit flies above him, playing a violin, while another angelic figure plays a trumpet. This is Kiev, Ukraine's capital, a place Kovalenko knows well.

"It's kind of the immigration feeling," he said. "I lose my touch with the old country."

Kovalenko's wife, Miriam, an American high-school teacher, taught him how to speak English. When he goes back to visit Ukraine, Kovalenko said, "it is wonderful, and painful, too, because I don't belong anymore."

His art, influenced by German expressionists and French impressionists, has undergone subtle changes in the U.S. Because of the upcoming show's topic, "I take what has connection with Ukraine," he said, "my memory, nostalgia, homesickness but also American landscapes and still lifes and everything."

• Oleksandra Pryveda, a textile artist and dress designer, is as comfortable with the intricacies of Ukrainian egg art as she is with batik.

Born in Lviv, in western Ukraine, she is an acknowledged master of these arts and has works in private collections around the world.

• Irina Kirienko Milton and her son immigrated to the U.S. in 1998 to rejoin her husband, and they eventually moved to Mukilteo. A former engineer, she found American society baffling at first.

"I didn't know how to balance a checkbook, how to pay utilities," she said.

Milton set about to study — first English, then art, which added to her classical art studies begun in Lugansk, in eastern Ukraine.

"I was blessed to have a classical education," she said. "It's kind of like music — you have to know notes before you start playing."

Now Milton teaches art at Everett Community College and in Mount Vernon.

• Valentinin Filin is part of a family of artists from Odessa, Ukraine, and came to the U.S. with his parents for religious freedom. Filin uses pastel pencil, making still lifes that give personality to objects and landscapes.

"Many countries give their artists a good education," he said. "But America gives opportunity."

• Evelina Egorova Huck studied art at Everett Community College.

"I am from Kiev, the capital city, and I developed my profession as a clothes designer," she said. "When I came here [in 1997], I did not know English. I studied English at Everett Community College ... and there I started seriously studying art."

• Anatoliy Voznyarskiy began studying art in Rivne, his hometown. He later went to Riga, Latvia, and returned to Ukraine in 1981 to finish his studies in Kiev.

Voznyarskiy and his family joined relatives in the U.S. in 2001.

He studied graphic design, Web design and photography with instructor Gary Nelson in the visual-communication program at Highline Community College in South King County. Nelson helped his student adapt to American art and graphics, according to the artist, and the result contains both painterly and digital art.

In "The Red and the Black," a series of figures with arms lifted to the sky, Voznyarskiy seeks "to show opposite of our life, like love and lust, peace and war, good and bad, and other opposite emotions," he said. "I want to describe emotions that are inside people, without which we cannot live."

Diane Wright: 425-745-7815 or dwright@seattletimes.com